Hide in Time (6 page)

Her mind jumped forward to when Matt
had taken her there that first Christmas after she’d been
shipwrecked. She had surprised him with the exact date it had been
built and the name of the architect. She’d also described the
Leigh-Fox family who lived there in 1814. It was the first time she
had unsettled Matt. He would not admit she could have been there. So
she’d almost floored him. She described the cellars; the only
part of the house unlikely to have been smartened up much. The
knockout punch came when she said, “You will find my name
etched into the wooden support on the far wall and above will be the
name ‘Adam’.

He took the blow well and hit back by
taking her by the hand and leading her, not downstairs to the cellars
but up to the gallery, where he’d pointed to a portrait with a
brass plaque underneath. ‘This Adam?’ he’d
enquired. Her knees had given way and she’d dropped to the
floor. Not Matt.

After that she’d said not another
word about the house. She’d refused to visit Matt at home ever
again. His name might be Redfern but he was undoubtedly a Leigh-Fox.

Now here they were in “Foxhills”
for their own safety. Laura rarely planned her future because the
past magnetized her. It wasn’t a compulsion; she was still in
control, she could pull away, but it cut her in two to try.
Furthermore, she felt she was meant to follow this benign power
gently but firmly focusing her attention on unfinished affairs.

Matt had insisted on telephoning a
long-standing friend – a Detective Chief Superintendent of
Police. “We can’t have all that man-power doing
paperwork. Think of the tax-payers’ money,” he said with
a wink, “We can employ it better.”

That wink was to Xandra, oh how it
hurt. If only I… but Laura could not face the dread of
thinking further.

She was quieter than usual over dinner.
“Laura, you look exhausted,” Matt said placing his hand
over hers on the table. Somehow he was winning and she was losing the
will to object to his increasing attentions and gaining in jealousy
if he looked elsewhere. “Once the police have been and spoken
to you, I think you should get some sleep. Your case is in the Guest
Room. Xandra’s is in the room overlooking the garden.”

Xandra, still bearing bruises and cuts
she’d acquired in her escape, and having had fewer hours sleep
nursing her diamonds, was nevertheless much perkier. ‘Running
on adrenaline,’ she’d said.

Matt succeeded in distracting them with
small talk. “All the bedrooms have been named after the female
line. Our Alexandra Room is named for my ancestor, the author,
Alexandra Foxley. It’s only the Guest Room that doesn’t
have a name yet.”

“Oh so that’s why you’re
seeking a wife. You have a room to name,” said Xandra. “What
an original chat-up line that could be.”

Laura and Xandra exchanged glances as
Matt’s butler entered. Xandra registered the employment of a
butler: Laura wanted to know what he was whispering.

Matt explained, “Late though it
is, Chief Super has arrived. Please excuse me for a moment. Then
perhaps you would follow me through to the drawing room when you’ve
finished your coffee. Don’t hurry; he’ll want to
reprimand me first and then I shall counter with reasons and excuses
and so that should keep him occupied for a while.”

A flash of lightning caused Laura and
Xandra to glance towards the window. As Laura contemplated saying how
much she liked a storm from the safety of a warm house, Xandra spoke,
accompanied by a low roll of thunder, “It’s a beautiful
room, isn’t it? The lightning’s showed up the sheen on
this green wallpaper. Is that an Adam fireplace?”

“Adam? Oh, the architect. I’m
sorry, I had thought… Actually, I’m not sure. I can’t
remember now.” Of course, it was. She was grateful for her
thoughts to be interrupted by the black-suited butler asking if they
would like the curtains drawn.

“Thank you.” Laura didn’t
know his name. Naughty Matt always referred to him as Jeeves. Laura
turned to Xandra and wrinkled her nose in fun as she said, “It’s
quite eerie with the rain beating against the window panes and it’s
getting darker by the minute.”

“Lightning flashing, thunder
rolling – I feel as if I’m in some sort of sinister play.
Any second now a body will be found.”

“We even have a policeman here,”
stage-whispered Laura.

“It’s obviously the butler
wot dunnit,” murmured Xandra as Jeeves flicked the lamp switch
on and closed the door behind him. “We’ll have to be each
other’s alibi.”

As the thunder rumbled like a timpani
crescendo, Laura chuckled – until she felt that prophetic
shiver. Time was goading her. “Tell me, Xandra, if you had a
choice, where and when would you like to live and with whom?”

“Where?” Xandra looked
around her. “Here would suit me very well,” she said
spreading her palms and her arms wide. “When? What a strange
question. I don’t have a choice.”

Laura took a sip of coffee and inhaled
the pleasing aroma. “If you did, would you like to live in the
past, the present or the future?”

“Oh I see,” said Xandra.
“Certainly not the future.” She thought for a moment
before continuing, “I’m finding the present rather
worrying. It’s not only current ‘gangland’
problems,” she sighed, “I do actually find the business
of keeping up with modern day living so time-consuming. Wasn’t
it that funny fellow, Kenneth Williams, who wrote in his diary
something about the day being filled with chores.”

Alluding to his suicide, Laura said,
“Yes, I think he found it all too much for him.” She was
quietly pleased with her knowledge of what everyone called ‘celebs’.
She supposed Kenneth Williams was a celeb?

“I have some sympathy with that,”
said Xandra. “Running a business, the endless paper work, the
VAT, the council tax, the car tax, the personal tax return, ad
infinitum,” she said stretching her arm towards the ceiling. “I
thought time was linear and kept everything from happening at once.
It doesn’t seem to be working for me.”

Laura reflected on Xandra’s
words. It didn’t work for her either but in quite a different
way from Xandra’s meaning; Laura had discovered something she
could tell no one – for who would believe her?

Xandra continued, “I am left with
little time to create, both in the workshop and,” she hesitated
before adding quietly, “I’d like to write.”

“Write? What would you write?”
asked the surprised Laura.

“I learned a little shorthand
when I was about sixteen to help with taking notes for exams and I
find I am often scribbling summaries of my ideas.” In a
theatrical fashion Xandra added, “I am constantly disappointed
that I have no time to sit down and write Chapter One of my first
great novel.”

Laura smiled insufficiently, preferring
to press on; everything was right, she shouldn’t stop now. “So
are you saying, you would like to live here but not in the future or
the present? What about the past?”

“If the past could afford me time
to write then I think I would opt for the past. But the past is not
ours to recover.”

For a fleeting moment, Laura had
imagined herself telling Xandra all, but that last sentence reminded
her of the importance of strategy – no good sounding doolally.
“And with whom?” asked Laura as nonchalantly as she could
manage.

“That’s your job.”

“I have the very man,”
Laura said quietly. She sprang up, pushed her coffee cup away and
said, “Xandra, we’re supposed to have followed Matt into
the drawing room. He’ll blame me for talking too much!”

Xandra leapt up to follow Laura and
whispered with some determination, “So long as the man you have
in mind for me is not Matt. He’s in love with someone else.”

In love? Matt? It couldn’t be
with her; Matt knew too much: he knew things could go wrong. Yet she
knew Xandra’s hint was not ill-founded; those ‘touchings’
meant something. No, he was just a very good friend, knowing when she
needed consoling. Her thoughts turned to Xandra. I’d miss her
so much. Matt had noticed their growing friendliness and commented on
their similarities – a great basis for a friendship, he’d
said. If only Xandra could marry the seemingly aloof and sometimes
remote Matt. But it wasn’t Matt she’d had in mind. She
felt muddled still.

Their disposition changed as they
entered the drawing room. Matt and the Police Chief Superintendent
stood up. It was the way they stood up which converted the girls’
mood.

“Laura, Xandra, it might be best
if you sit here on the sofa. Chief Superintendent Paul Tanner has
enquiries to make. D.S. Miller is taking notes.” Matt nodded
towards a previously unnoticed man in the far corner of the room. It
was Xandra’s erstwhile protection officer. Matt then sat on the
arm of the cream-coloured sofa next to Laura while C.S. Tanner paced
in front of the imposing hearth.

He spoke in a manner which didn’t
invite interruption. “It has been verified that an accelerant
in a glass bottle, probably petrol, was hurled into your premises
from the door at the top of the stairs, Miss Radcliffe. That door, as
you know, was then locked from the outside, trapping you inside.”
He paced slowly back and forth again as if he was experiencing some
reluctance to continue. He took a deep breath. “From here on,
I’ll record all that is said: you have no objections I take
it?” He indicated a recorder on the nearby side table then
awaited their consent before pushing the button and continuing.
“There is no doubt it was arson. There is no doubt it was their
intention to kill you. The only question is who, and how many are
determined that you shall not identify them.”

Paul Tanner summed up the reasons he
thought Xandra’s life was being threatened. The man inside the
jewellers opposite Laura’s agency in Middleston had disabled
the security cameras, even the one on the roof, and only Xandra had
seen two of them without their balaclavas and she might also be able
to identify the man inside from his exceptional ability.

Xandra’s face was all
concentration.

“I want you to focus on the man
who had gained entry to the building, but not through the front door,
Miss Radcliffe. I know you’ve said you were almost totally
overwhelmed by his superior skills, but I want you to relive that
with me now. You squeezed your way through the shop door behind one
of the men you seized by the scruff of the neck. Carry on from there
please.”

Xandra carefully went through her moves
up to the point where one man had been flung against the door. She
then closed her eyes and, encouraged by Matt, she recalled all that
she could about the ‘master’ as she called him.
“Definitely vastly experienced; a professional I would say –
beyond being an ordinary instructor. He was too fast, too…
well, perhaps he was in the SAS or something. Oh! There is something
I haven’t told you.” She squeezed her eyes tightly. “He
had a cross tattooed on the outside of his left wrist.” She
rubbed her wrist.

Nobody spoke until Xandra opened her
eyes.

“A cross?” urged Matt.

“Like this?” said CS
Tanner. He had drawn a cross on his left wrist.

“Not quite.” Xandra paused
before adding, “It was more like an X.”

D.S. Miller approached his senior
officer, murmured something, then returned to taking his notes.

Matt’s friend wiped the cross
from his wrist and drew an ‘X’. He then waved his arm
around in front of Xandra.

“That’s it!” said
Xandra, “But I only saw it when he had me in a stranglehold and
his sleeve was scrunched up.”

D.S. Miller spoke confidently. “Xtra.
The man is known as ‘Xtra’. He’s a stunt man. Does
some phenomenal stuff. Doubles for heroes and villains and so on.”

“Well done, Xandra,” Matt
said encouragingly.

“Thank goodness you know about
such things,” Xandra said looking over her shoulder at D.S.
Miller.

“Film fanatic, that’s all,
Miss Radcliffe,” responded Miller.

“Motive? Where’s the
motive? He must earn millions – why would he be doing
provincial robberies?” demanded his superior.

“He likes excitement and they say
he’s too old for all the new stunts required. There was an
article in the paper about his retirement plans. He sounded bitter
about being forced out of the film industry and said he might set up
his own company. It seems he has, and now gets his kicks climbing up
drainpipes.”

“Ok, Miller, you’ve
redeemed yourself. So,” he paused, “let us suppose this
Xtra was concerned you’d recognize him by this identifying
mark.” He paused a little longer and glanced back and forth
from Xandra to Matt before saying, “You’d have to be
dealt with.”

Matt surreptitiously looked at Xandra.

“In the light of what you know
now, can you add anything to your statement about your kidnap?”

Xandra closed her eyes again. “It
was all so hazy. I can only add that it was the mention of ‘the
concrete boots’ that spurred me into escaping.”

Matt raised an eyebrow at his friend.

“Ruthless.” Walking over to
switch off the recorder, C.S. Paul Tanner added, “No need to go
over yesterday’s escape any more.” He dug his hands deep
in his pockets, as if they might contain inspiration. “Your Ju
Jitsu certainly saved your life.” He took a deep breath. “It’s
late. I’ll have a full statement written up, Miss Radcliffe and
send someone around tomorrow for you to sign it, if you would,
please.”

“I’ll be relieved to
confirm their violence and I hope you capture them quickly.”

“Until we do, you must not leave
this house. We are posting armed officers back and front who will
augment Matt’s own experienced staff who …”

“You’re welcome to stay for
as long as necessary, Xandra; you too, of course, Laura,” Matt
hurriedly confirmed. Why had Matt interrupted? Occasionally Laura had
the feeling he was concealing something.