Child's Play (42 page)
Bent
over a large wicker hamper, Daisy was rummaging for something.
Janet
remained by the door, well out of her reach. As her eyes adapted to the gloom, she saw more hampers stacked against a wall, stools upended on each other, rolled-up nets in a corner, and rows of folded deckchairs and trestle tables. There were three doors on the opposite wall, and she thought they must lead to the changing rooms and perhaps a kitchen. Dust motes drifted across the light that slanted through the closed louvres at the windows, and the place stank of mildew.
‘
Sod it!’ Daisy dropped the lid. ‘There are just plates and things in here.’ She turned to Janet. ‘Help me lift that top one,’ she said, pointing to the stack. ‘I know there are racquets somewhere.’
‘
I’ve already said I don’t want to play tennis.’
‘
Why not?’ Daisy demanded. ‘What else are we going to do?’
Janet
shrugged. ‘Talk?’
Daisy
sat down heavily on the lid and began to swing her legs, heels cutting swathes through the dust on the floorboards. ‘What about?’ She looked up. ‘You’re not allowed to talk about Torrance or Sukie unless I’ve got a solicitor with me.’ Her eyes were accusing. ‘You shouldn’t have made me say what I did. You’d get into trouble if I snitched.’ Then she offered her ghastly smile. ‘But I won’t, so you needn’t worry.’
Playing
for time, Janet glanced at her watch. ‘I suppose we
could
have a game of tennis,’ she said. ‘Tell you what, you put up one of the nets and I’ll look for the racquets.’
‘
I knew you’d see sense.’ Daisy jumped to her feet, trotted over to the corner and gathered up the nearest net.
As
Daisy started towards the door, Janet walked around the wall. She put one of the stools on the floor, climbed on to it and, stretching for the lid of the topmost hamper, called over her shoulder, ‘I’ll give you a shout if I need help with anything.’ She thought she heard Daisy grunt, but the sudden clatter as two golfing umbrellas rolled off the hamper and hit the floor obliterated any noise from outside.
Ready
to accost her, McKenna waited for the headmistress to re-emerge from her house, but the door stayed firmly shut. Eventually he started back along the woodland path, facing the fact that she was likely to get away scot-free — a humourless pun — trudging on unawares when the gravel gave way to tarmac. A frantic horn blast from the driver of the security van jolted him back to his senses. Barely avoiding the van’s front bumper, he staggered on to the verge just in time.
He
concentrated on taking stock of his surroundings. Between the trees, the bright blue glimmer of the swimming pool was now visible. Briefly, Janet and Daisy were once again in sight, but they were soon absorbed by the woods. Fixing his eyes on the point where they disappeared, he set off at a fast walk, but had barely covered fifty yards before he was forced to drop his gaze. The glitter of sunlight on water, the swaying branches, the shifting shadows, played tricks with his vision, and more than once he was sure he glimpsed Janet retracing steps she had already taken.
Once Janet agreed to a game, Daisy stepped out of the pavilion’s rear door feeling almost light-hearted. While they were knocking the ball back and forth — not too strenuously because her breasts hurt more than ever — she would unload her burden of guilt and shame and fear, without having to stand still, look into Janet’s eyes and witness her scorn and disgust. Hugging the net loosely to her chest, she was about to descend the steps when there was a violent tug on her trouser hem. She glanced down into the face of her killer, and in the split second before she crashed earthwards realised how easily, and how bitterly, she had been duped.
The
net unfurled, winding itself around her. There was a dull crack as she hit the bottom step, and when she came to rest, her head was lolling at an impossible angle.
The
girl who had been lying in wait beneath the steps darted towards her. Snatching a handful of curls, she lifted Daisy’s head. It flopped heavily and had it not been for the grinding of broken bone, Daisy might have been a rag doll stuffed with sawdust.
Exultant
with success, the girl let go and, without a backward glance, melted away into the woods. She stopped once on her way back to school, to extract a strand of Daisy’s hair that had stuck between her fingers.
The
water in the pool plashed gently against the coping and the wind whispered through the leaves, and as McKenna entered the tunnel of trees beyond the pool house the sound of hymn singing hung in the air. The sudden bleep of his mobile was a strident intrusion in that harmonious world.
The
trees interfered with the signal. With the handset angled skywards, he asked the operator to repeat the message. The shock anchored him to the ground as firmly as the shadow of each tree was held fast about its roots. When he began to run he had to look down to be sure his feet were not embedded in cannibal mud.
Stretching
endlessly ahead, the tree tunnel was alive with shadows and menace and snatches of music; abruptly, it debouched into what seemed like a huge green cage. He clung to the netting, gasping for breath, seeing the puddles, the lofty umpire’s perches, the leaf-strewn veranda of the pavilion. Then a movement to the side of the building caught his eye. He turned slowly and his blood ran like ice as a figure emerged from the snarl of undergrowth. Bindweed tangled with her hair and clung to her clothes, her face was streaked with dirt and for one breath-stealing moment he thought she was Sukie’s ghost.
Janet
staggered a few paces, then fell to her knees. ‘Daisy’s dead,’ she moaned, holding her head. ‘She lost her footing on the steps and it’s all my fault.’
When Sukie’s funeral was being arranged, John Melville exercised the one prerogative left to him and forbade McKenna from attending. Everything else was taken out of his hands by Hester’s parents.
The
service was held in the medieval chapel on their estate, where generations of ancestors had submitted to their rites of passage. Topped with a spray of white roses, Sukie’s casket lay on the floor before the altar. Shoulder to shoulder, Hester’s parents occupied the first pew. John was behind his father-in-law, his left hand curled round the time-worn carving on the arm rest, his right pulling wretchedly at his black silk tie.
Hester,
sinking fast in a sea of grief whipped up to storm force by her own guilt, sat as far apart from her husband as decency permitted. When the shuffle of feet disturbed her and she turned to see Jack Tuttle take his place, she barely recognised him, although she had a faint recollection of his being kind to her at some dreadful time in the past.
As
brief and furtive as the christening, Hester thought her daughter’s funeral was almost squalid, as if the life that began in shame must end thus. All within the space of a few minutes, it seemed, the vicar spoke, prayed, spoke again, offered a final prayer, then beckoned the undertaker’s men to heft the casket on their shoulders. When the small procession moved down the aisle, she fell into step two paces behind her parents. Her mother was grimly erect, iron-grey hair upswept under a huge black hat, stony features veiled in black. Her father marched to Chopin’s funeral dirge, playing on the windy old organ. One or two petals, falling from the rose spray, were trampled under his marching feet.
The
day was humid and overcast. As she emerged from the chapel, Hester noticed a group of estate workers standing very quietly beyond the wall, caps and hats doffed in respect. They stared reproachfully at her mother, who looked neither to right nor left as she pursued the jolting casket to the mouth of the open grave. The procession never wavered: the vicar, the casket, her parents, herself, her husband and that kindly policeman. She heard him trip on the loose flagstone that had rocked beneath her own feet.
At
the graveside, a fine drizzle began to settle on their heads and shoulders. On the rose petals it glistened like tears. There were more words from the vicar, the smoke and scent of incense and a spattering of holy water before the casket was lowered. Hester was dry-eyed as her daughter sank into the earth, for she had already made the decision to join her.
She
was planning her death with the same precision her grandfather was said to have applied to his military campaigns and, unlike Imogen Oliver, would not make a botch of it. Imogen had already lost one of her poisoned kidneys, and although anyone could survive with one leg and one kidney, Hester knew, in her heart of hearts, that this was only the beginning. Imogen would die by degrees, and Hester prayed it would be a long and harrowing process, for Imogen had killed Sukie as surely as if her own hands had thrust her into the greedy waters of the Strait.
On
the day the coroner issued Sukie’s burial certificate, the Oliver’s solicitor sent a cheque for every penny they had swindled out of the Melvilles, together with six months’ interest. Explaining that Imogen had suddenly and inexplicably recovered her memory, the solicitor trusted that the money would be accepted in full reparation for an error beyond anyone’s control and closed with an expression of sympathy for Sukie’s tragic death.
Daisy’s funeral was a grand affair, in a huge Victorian church luminous with candles and stained glass, her coffin on a draped bier above a carpet of flowers that filled the nave with their scent. Grace’s father, imposingly robed, took the service and Grace, childlike in her surplice, led the choir.
With
Martha at her side, Alice sat ten or twelve rows from the front. Apart from Grace, Daisy’s parents and the police, who were relegated to a pew at the back, she recognised no one among the hundreds of richly dressed people around her. She had looked in vain for their school friends, the teachers, Ainsley, the house captains, and even for Dr Scott, who had vanished from school two days after Daisy’s accident. Matron, with nowhere to go, was still holed up in her flat when term ended.
Martha
prayed that bringing Alice to the funeral would break the last shackle binding her to Daisy, even if she never forgot her. Nor, Martha knew, would she forget Torrance. The emotional experiences those two girls wrought upon her would be there for the rest of her life, ebbing and flowing in her memory, evoking responses according to the climate, much as the silver water forever rushing back and forth past the school must subject itself to the four winds and the temper of the heavens. Half listening to the Reverend Blackwell’s exequies, Martha wondered for the thousandth time what lay behind Daisy’s dreadful allegation about Torrance, unless it was simply the truth. Her only comfort came from the hope that Daisy had made a mistake, judging a different kind of encounter by the light of her own prejudices.
By
craning her neck a little, Alice could view the coffin through the forest of necks before her. She had never seen a body inside a coffin and could not picture Daisy in that ornate box, although in her mind’s eye she saw every horrible detail of Daisy smashed to ruins at the foot of the pavilion steps. Imagining how the people in front would look if their necks suddenly snapped, she groped rather blindly for Martha’s hand.
Good
Catholic that he was, McKenna felt deeply uncomfortable in an Anglican church, almost as if he were committing an act of betrayal. He had no idea what to do with himself, how to present his worship and respects, when to kneel, to stand or to pray, despite discreet instructions on the Order of Service set before each mourner.
The
territory must be alien to Janet too, he thought, glancing surreptitiously at her bowed head. Her face was pale and she had lost weight in the past few weeks. The fine cloth of her black suit hung very loose.
During
the investigation into Daisy’s death she was suspended from duty. Two independent autopsies, exhaustive inspections of the site and finally, a coroner’s inquest, determined cause of death as misadventure, to which poor maintenance of the school grounds had been a contributing factor. Janet was officially exonerated, but nonetheless, continued to blame herself, and confessed to McKenna that because Daisy had thoroughly unnerved her, she had encouraged her to leave the pavilion. That small, so human, lapse of professionalism, had held the most devastating consequences — if, he reflected, that were her only lapse. He glanced again at her bowed head, then at the hands clasped loosely in her lap, knowing he was not alone in being plagued by doubts.
Were
those pale, blue-veined hands stained with Daisy’s blood, he wondered, yet again? Was that why she seemed almost paralysed with guilt? Or had she simply taken on her own shoulders the lion’s share of their collective liability? Nona Lloyd had been on sick leave since the day after Daisy’s death, so crushed by the weight of her own self-reproach that she now needed psychiatric help. Suddenly, he realised he had not had a chance to ask her whether the necklace in the jeweller’s photograph matched any of those she found among Imogen’s possessions. One more oversight, he told himself, and although it was probably of no importance, it might, on the other hand, be the key to solving the puzzle that had outwitted them all.
Janet
felt suffocated by the press of black-clad bodies at every turn. She could see nothing of the service, bar the occasional glimpse of Grace’s father bobbing up and down before the altar. She stared blankly into space, seeing instead Daisy in a heap on the ground, remembering how she first thought the girl had tripped over the tennis net and stunned herself, and how annoyed she was when she set about disentangling her. She would never forget the absolute horror of realising she was dead.
The
coroner had been satisfied that the marks on the top step and on Daisy’s shoes proved unequivocally that she had slipped on one of the clumps of lichen that grew like tumours on every surface. Daisy’s own words to Nona were accepted as condemning evidence that she had killed Sukie, although no one could suggest a motive, beyond the tenuous theory that she had harboured a lunatic compulsion to avenge Imogen’s leg.
Janet
had seen Daisy’s parents at the inquest, but doubted that she would today be able to pick them out from the crowd. She had no idea whether they accepted either theory or verdict, although there had been no murmurings to the contrary. What do I believe? she wondered. In her heart of hearts, she believed Daisy had been terribly wronged, and that both truth and retribution were being sacrificed to the easy answer.
For
Jack, Daisy’s funeral was surrounded by so much ceremony that, thankfully, there was little room left for feeling. He had found Sukie’s funeral one of the saddest experiences of his life and he could still hear Hester’s voice, telling him she did not care who had killed Sukie, or why, for it only mattered to her that Sukie was dead.
After
Daisy’s death, convinced the resolution to hand was simultaneously too plausible and riddled with too many doubts, he and McKenna had argued furiously with their chief constable for permission to continue the investigation. Given limited authority until the final forensic tests on Sukie’s clothes were completed, they had searched Daisy’s effects, watched over by her parents, but found nothing to indicate whether she had or had not killed Sukie, or attempted to kill Torrance. As the Podmores’ chauffeur was about to shut Daisy’s trunk and a suite of leather suitcases in their car boot, Jack remembered her backpack was still in the staff flat, and because she had been under constant police scrutiny from the moment she opened her mouth with the steamy allegations about Torrance, he let her parents take it away without bothering to rummage through its contents.
In
the light of Daisy’s revelations to Janet about Imogen’s accident, Nancy and Charlotte were again questioned. Remembering what Avril had told him, Jack approached Charlotte with cautious sympathy, wondering what soul-destroying assaults she had suffered from those whose mantle she would later inherit, but she had learned her lessons well and, in Avril’s words, she ‘blanked’ him.
For
some reason he knew he would never fathom, Nancy capitulated. She admitted to ‘putting pressure’ on Imogen and Sukie, presenting the police with a confused, and confusing, justification centred on the need for information, where she tried to explain the fear and threat arising from ignorance, concealment and uncertainty in a place such as the Hermitage. ‘You’ve got to
know
,’ she had told them. ‘If only
some
people know about something that’s so bloody important, you can’t be sure they’re not holding back something else that could affect
you
.’ Her sentiments were very similar to those Justine expressed to McKenna, but spoken from a totally self-centred perspective, the voice of a personality deformed and brutalised by the years of bullying Nancy herself had endured. She flatly and consistently denied any involvement in Sukie’s death, or indeed, any knowledge of it. Charlotte was dismissed as a possible candidate with a contemptuous comment. ‘She wouldn’t have the bottle,’ Nancy said. ‘And she can’t stand the sight of blood.’
Jack
went from the subjects, as he saw them, to the deposed monarch, but Freya Scott had already reorganised her defences. Far from expressing any contrition, she laid the blame ‘fairly and squarely’ at the feet of the police. ‘Your response to Sukie’s death was sluggish and shallow,’ she said. ‘Had Superintendent McKenna set his mind to the task in hand, instead of allowing himself to be — shall we say too easily, and most inappropriately, sidetracked? — Imogen would not have tried to kill herself, Daisy would not he dead, and I would not have been made the scapegoat.’
‘
And how was Superintendent McKenna “sidetracked” ?’
‘
That,’ she replied, with a dark hint, ‘is something you must ask
him
.’
‘
On the contrary, Dr Scott, if you’re aware of police misconduct or negligence, you’re under an obligation to report it.’
He
left the ball in her court but sure she would somehow, sometime, hit back, he had reported the conversation to McKenna, and suggested they organise their own defence.
‘
But first,’ he had said, ‘I need to know what she’s getting at.’
McKenna,
squirming with embarrassment, eventually told him. ‘When I was in the lift with her, going up to Imogen’s room after the incident with Nancy, she suddenly fell against me.’
‘
Why?’
‘
She sort of collapsed. In despair, it seemed.’
‘
What did you do?’
‘
I put my hands on her shoulders.’
‘
Then what?’
Offering
a stiff little shrug, McKenna said, ‘Nothing.’
‘
Nothing at all?’
‘
No.’
‘
She’s implying a lot more.’
‘
Yes, I’m sure she is.’
‘
Well,’ Jack remarked, ‘if she
does
try to make capital out of it, you just say you reacted as any normal person would when somebody looks like they’re about to keel over.’
‘
It’s as easy as that, is it?’
‘
You hardly had time to get into her underwear,’ Jack had said trenchantly. ‘Even if you’d wanted to.’
Dewi
’s knees were aching. He had lost count of the times he had already knelt, stood, and knelt again, all to the subdued shuffle of hundreds of other feet and the rustle of as many garments.
He
thought it wrong for them to be there. However indirectly, they were to blame for Daisy’s death, for negligence, unwitting or not, always ended in disaster. Torrance was as good as dead, and that was their fault, too, because the truth about her had died with Daisy. Remembering the devastation Daisy’s story wreaked upon the Torrance he had first encountered on the ride through the woods gave him the same, sick wrench in the pit of his stomach that he experienced when he saw her thrown from Purdey’s back. McKenna had been utterly averse to questioning her about the allegations, but the fact that Alice had been party to them forced his hand, and although Alice doggedly maintained that Daisy had lied, Torrance was, as Martha had predicted, destroyed. As soon as she was allowed to leave the school, she had loaded Tonto and Purdey into a horsebox and driven away, all her vividness permanently tarnished by the dirt of uncertainty.
At
Sukie’s funeral, John Melville told Jack that she had paid them more for Purdey than the mare originally cost, and then, commenting on the sudden upturn in their monetary fortunes, said bitterly, ‘And much good it will bring.’
Much
good avarice brought anyone, Dewi reflected. The Olivers were facing several criminal charges, for despite the likely consequences for herself, Imogen had co-operated willingly in her parents’ downfall, and provided the police with a damning account of their conspiracy. That was perhaps the only certainty in this morass of ambiguity, for when Sukie’s clothes failed to yield up their secrets to the most intense scrutiny science could apply, the police lost their last opportunity to uncover the truth of her death.
He
was sitting closer to the aisle than the others and could see a procession beginning to form at the altar. When he glanced round, he saw the doors being opened in readiness and the light breaking through had a silvery edge, an uneasy glitter. A black-garbed figure standing in the shadow of a column caught his eye and for a moment, he thought it was Freya Scott.
Every
bone in Martha’s body ached. When the final prayers were done and the Reverend Blackwell signalled for the choir to move from their stalls, she hooked her fingers over the pew in front to pull herself upright. Little flurries of activity rippled through the nave like a soft wind as the congregation readied itself.
Daisy
’s mother felt as if someone had torn open her chest, closed their fingers around her heart and were pulling it shred by bloody shred from its moorings. She had never imagined such a sensation possible, but she had never imagined her child’s death. All the love she had never shown Daisy, all the emotion she never suspected might exist, had come out of hiding to destroy her, and inside the coffin from which she could not take her eyes was what remained of a whole human being she had simply never known. When she unpacked Daisy’s baggage, she found the diary in the backpack, but read no further than the first few entries before grief threatened to annihilate her. Her husband said the diary, the clothes, the toys, the books — every relic of Daisy’s existence — should be burned. She said she would kill him if he laid a finger on one single thing, then locked Daisy’s room, hid the key, and squirreled away the diary for a time when she might have the strength to read on.