Night Visit
| Night Visit |
| Priscilla Masters |
| UK |
| (1998) |
emergency night visit—fatefully leaving her husband to meet the alluring
Jude . . .
Harriet's patient, Reuben Camforth, is an old man who lives on the edge of the forest. As he is taken to hospital for the last time, Reuben begs for Harriet's help. A decade earlier, his six year old granddaughter Melanie vanished. His final wish is for her disappearance to be solved.
Two months pass and with her personal life in turmoil, Harriet cannot forget Reuben’s last words. She finds herself becoming obsessed with the image of a child in a red dress wandering in the woods. She vows to find the
body—and the killer—of the little girl they called Melanie Toadstool . .
..
©
Priscilla Masters 2014
The right of Priscilla Masters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the UK in 1998 by arrangement with Macmillan.
This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Every writer needs inspiration. Thank you, Phil, for being mine. Thanks too to Jane for `her little idea' and to Darley for his guidance all the way through from Alpha to Omega.
July
1988
The child’s eyelids snapped open in response to the slivers of sun across her face. Garan had not pulled the curtains quite together.
She
sat up to the rhythm of the cows munching. That and the bright sun were enough to tempt her to join them so she threw the covers off and slid to the floor, hesitating only a moment before slipping her clothes over her head and fastening her sandals, then creeping downstairs. She didn’t want Garan to hear because Garan would stop her.
The
bolt was stiff and large for her fingers and it was even harder to shoot it open without waking them. She held her breath as the final bang echoed around the empty kitchen.
She
didn’t want Garan to hear. Garan would stop her. But soft snores wafting down from the bedroom reassured her.
Garan
was asleep.
So
she could run.
The
cows stopped their munching just long enough to lift their heads and watch her pass before they bent again to resume their chewing. Dew-damp grass was slippery under her shoes as she walked through the long shadows of the cows swaying as they moved to juicier blades and she too moved away from the house as though drawn towards the dark rim of trees.
For
the first time she reached the end without being pulled back. And curious, she peered through the slats in the fence. There were trees and patches of light grass, a rabbit and a bird, singing, on a branch. It was the rabbit that tempted her even though Garan had warned her.
The
child glanced back at the shrouded windows.
But
Garan was asleep.
Ten
years
later...
Larkdale Herald December 24th 1998
Local Doctor Fights For
Life Following Vicious Assault
A
family doctor was tonight in a critical condition after apparently being summoned to an isolated country area.
The
doctor was discovered early this morning with severe head injuries after an assault described as vicious, premeditated and apparently motiveless. A claw hammer found near the scene of the crime has been sent for forensic analysis.
Detective
Inspector Angela Skilton, investigating the case, commented tonight, ‘It’s a good job the night was fairly warm for the time of year or the doctor would have died of shock and exposure. We urge members of the public to let us know of anything suspicious they might have seen in the area of Gordon’s Lane last night or for anyone who called the doctor out in the last twenty-four hours to contact us so we can exclude them from our enquiries.’
The
British Medical Association said they were concerned about the increase in violent attacks on their members and were preparing guidelines to help the medical profession deal with such incidents. A spokesman said, ‘Unfortunately the nature of the job puts doctors at risk from a certain sector of society who may resort to violence to get what they want. These may be addicts desperate for drugs, patients with aggressive tendencies or those suffering from psychotic illnesses. These doctor/patient confrontations may well take place with the doctor alone, in the patient’s home and at night and threaten the entire concept of out of hours home visiting, particularly when the doctor is a female. We urge our members not to carry addictive drugs to minimise the risk of becoming a target for such patients.’
The
name of the General Practitioner who is understood to come from a Larkdale practice has been withheld until relatives have been informed.
Police
are keeping a round the clock vigil at the hospital, in the hope that the doctor will eventually regain consciousness but it is understood that a patient of the doctor’s is helping the police with their enquiries.
Twelve
months
earlier
I confess, I am a superstitious person. I dislike coincidence and cracks in the pavement, black cats and walking under ladders. I frequently touch wood. But my deepest-held superstition concerns New Year’s Eve. Perhaps it stems from the first time I was allowed to stay up and witness the arrival of the New Year. It sent an uncomfortable shiver up my spine, not the glancing back at the old year but a horrid apprehension for what the new year might bring. I think I was about ten years old, both excited and apprehensive, pleased at the late hour yet dreading the actual cusp of the year. I remember that on the first stroke of twelve I asked myself with a shiver, Am I happy? Am I really and truly happy?
I
knew that the question had huge significance because the entire following year would be coloured by my reply.
So
for the first hour of the New Year I was always filled with apprehension, using each incident as an omen, a jogged arm, a spilt drink, a torn dress, anger from my father, apologies from my mother, mad, bad looks between them. After I had qualified as a doctor I hated being on call on New Year’s Eve. But I had never worked out why. For whom would it prove unfortunate? For me or my patients? Would I blight them or they me?
On
that particular New Year’s Eve I was unlucky enough to be on call. Looking back now I wonder if it would have been better if I had readopted my old, childhood habit and hidden under the bed...
*
It began at exactly twenty-two minutes past twelve on the first of January, about an hour after we’d finally arrived at the New Year’s Eve party. We’d got there late—not because I was on duty and had been called out to a child with probable appendicitis; that hadn’t been the delaying factor. A swift, textbook diagnosis, a chat with the house surgeon on call, the child’s transfer to hospital accompanied by worried parents. That had been the easy, expedient part. The problem had been Robin. He hadn’t been ready.
I
had arrived back from the visit to find him still standing under the shower, shampooing his hair, soaping his armpits, simply standing, his head tilted upwards to meet the water cascading down his face, exactly as he had almost certainly been doing all the time I had been examining the sick child and arranging her admission to hospital. I slammed the door shut on his ‘prinking and preening’ as my father would have called it. But my father had been talking about girls. What the appropriate phrase would have been for a man who blow-dried his hair with the narcissism of a professional crimper, slapped on after-shave with all the generosity of a perfume saleswoman and then spent thirty minutes deciding which tie to wear I was not sure. But whatever it was my husband did it. And he was doing it now.
He
looked up, aware that I was watching him. Robin always knew when someone was watching him and they frequently did—especially women.
He
shot me a sly glance. ‘Going like that, Harry?’
‘
Absolutely.’ I uncoiled from the bed. ‘I normally wear baggy brown skirts, loafers and thick sweaters to New Year’s Eve parties.’
‘
Mmm.’ He wasn’t really listening but was still distracted by the ties and his reflection, holding up first a multi-coloured maroon and grey then a psychedelic green and lastly a sedate navy against his shirt, holding the last up a fraction longer than the others because it complimented his eyes. I knew him so well I didn’t even need to watch him to realise that each time he held a tie against him he would unconsciously be smiling into the mirror.
‘
Prinking and preening,’ I muttered. He was far too absorbed in himself to hear.
At
last we were ready to descend from the bedroom. We settled the babysitter in front of the TV with cans of coke and packets of crisps, sensing her anxiety to be rid of us. Ever since she’d acquired a boyfriend she could not wait for us to go. The boyfriend was young. His clothes looked scruffy and too big for him. He stared at the carpet, flushed and refused to meet our eyes.
But
Sylvie was polite. ‘Have a good time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ she said cheekily. The boyfriend’s face turned an even deeper shade of red.
Such
transparent embarrassment. He’d grow out of it.
Outside
Robin threw me the car keys. ‘You may as well drive, Harriet. You won’t be drinking much anyway—being on call.’
I
had thought such bad luck might have warranted some sympathy but Robin was irritated and, I suspected, feeling sorry for himself. Bloody wife on call. New Year’s Eve.
Stuff
him, I thought, as I slipped the car into gear and reversed down our drive onto Larch Road.
There
was a sharp frost that night which had left a dangerous satin sheen on the road. Above, a navy sky speckled with stars gave me the usual feeling of awe, beauty and insignificance and as I drove down the road I picked up the vague sounds of New Year’s Eve parties all around the ‘select development’ where we lived. Through lit windows I could spy on stage-set parties, people laughing, people drinking around Christmas trees and people wearing silly hats. We drove past and left them all behind.
It
was a quarter to twelve when we arrived at Ruth and Arthur’s. And so my earlier fears had not been realised. There were still fifteen minutes to go of this old year before the new one began. On the threshold I hesitated before following Robin through.
Inside
the party was in full swing with plenty of loud, cheery voices, beer spilling on the carpet, people talking with their mouths full, spitting olive stones into ashtrays. I moved through the clusters of people, aware that enough wine had been drunk for the women to start flirting in the slightly debauched way thirty-something women do, with flushed faces, bad language and midriff bulges tightly reined in. And I could anticipate the confessions which would buzz along the telephone wires the next day.
But
this was a nosy little town. Plenty would not be forgiven—or forgotten.
I
had barely had a drink planted in my hand before someone shouted, ‘Two minutes to go.’ The television was switched on, the Party Swingers CD off. There was the inevitable sound of bagpipes. Big Ben chimed. We sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’. The kissing began and I was overwhelmed with a huge dissatisfaction that I knew would last all year.
We
had still been pecking cheeks and wishing each other the compliments of the season when the door was flung open and a dark haired man entered. He was squat with coarse, ugly features reminiscent of the missing link and his dogstooth check suit was flashy and tasteless but expensive. He was no oil painting but while he would have been thrown out of a beauty contest his escort, following closely behind, would not. She was a slim beauty with pale, shoulder length hair good enough for a shampoo advert and a silver dress that displayed, to perfection, large, unsupported breasts, a handspan waist and slim, curving hips. The entire gathering seemed to draw breath and notice her while her blue eyes flashed around the room, sizing everyone up, males and females, until they caressed my husband and stuck there. Robin was already loosening his tie—the psychedelic green. I could have warmed my hands by the sexual tension in their gaze. I watched until it started smoking and out of mortification I switched my attention back to her escort. I felt a surge of sympathy for him because I knew he was enduring the same as me. Beautiful partners are a destructive force. Hurricanes uproot trees and flatten unstable buildings. Beautiful partners wreak their own havoc. They uproot relationships and flatten egos. So I flashed him a warm, friendly smile.
Ruth
sashayed towards me and flung her arms around my neck. ‘Harriet, darling. A Happy New Year’.
She
was pissed. Her dress had ridden far up her plump thighs and she didn’t even care. Sober she would have anchored the hem firmly down. She gave a wobbly smile then dug me in the ribs.
‘
Potent stuff,’ she said with a strange, faltering wink, ‘that HRT.’ Her arm dropped around my shoulders.
‘
Delighted it agrees with you.’ I was always stiff mixing work with my social life. I was never quite sure how to act—normally or responsibly—and invariably came over as distant or snobbish. I was aware that it isolated me but no one at medical school taught you how to mix with patients who regarded you as superhuman and infallible, and friends who discussed wombs and cervixes at inappropriate times. I had been subjected on more than one occasion to talk of periods at dinner parties, birth control at the theatre, gastric reflux at restaurants.
‘
It does agree with me, Harry. It does,’ she replied in her booming voice. It probably stood her in good stead at the comprehensive school where she was a headmistress but right now it was making my eardrum vibrate uncomfortably.
Quite
suddenly she stopped talking and her eyes flickered around the room, deliberately not pausing on anyone—not even on the silver dress. But when they landed back on me she was frowning.
It
didn’t take much insight to read her mind. ‘I hope you
are
having a good time,’ she said, suddenly and soberly perceptive.
I
assured her I was. I really was but it didn’t fool her.
‘
I worry about you, Harry,’ she said.
Me
too.
I
was silent. I could see right past her. The blonde was moving in for the kill. For minutes now she had been fluttering around the room with the good taste not to approach my husband directly, but working on widening the distance between her and Ape Man.
Robin
was lounging against the wall in that half-cocked, lazy way he had, talking to my partner, Duncan. His eyes, however, were directed elsewhere. In fact they had been following her around the room—like all the other men. Whoever they had been talking to they had all been eyeing the silver dress at the precise point where it ended, a good way up the slim thighs.
I
moved my head to take in Duncan, my sedate, country tweed partner who had stopped watching his wife with such absorption and was contorting his neck so he too could get his eyeful. Perhaps this should have alerted me. Duncan was a straight, family man, no flirter or seducer. Yet he too was mesmerised by the girl. She even had the right laugh. When writers next describe someone’s laugh as ‘bell-like’, believe them.
Tinkle
tinkle.
But
now she had reached her goal and was within touching distance of Robin. The laugh pealed a few more carillons before his eyes searched for and found me. I knew the drill inside out, upside down, backwards and forwards, word perfect.
She
’d asked him whether his wife was here. Quick work.
I
sensed a rapid, professional appraisal before she turned back to him.
Even
from the wrong side of the room I could read her mind.
No
competition whatsoever.
Plain,
stick-thin and short with straight, mousy hair and a rotten egg complexion. Plus I knew I had no flair at dressing. You see that was another thing they had neglected to teach me at medical school, the right clothes for a female medic to wear. I had such a horror of looking tarty that I stuck to safe, neutral colours, below knee skirts that ballooned over my hips. Even my party dress tonight was hardly alluring, black wool with a full skirt, a high neck, a modest length. I looked down at the thick, homely material and the low heeled shoes adorned with my one concession to the festive season—diamante buckles. In fact, I reflected, my clothes bore so little resemblance to my actual form that I could have gained two stone and no one would have noticed—not even Robin.
Tinkle
tinkle.
Especially
not Robin.
I
dreaded the next twelve months.
I
was so sick of going to parties only to be discounted by the glamour-girls. I was sick of Robin’s emotional instability, sick of the way he bounced from woman to woman, always returning to me, like a ball from the wall. I was sick of being the discarded wife. It hit me like a shovel in the chest to realise just how sick I was because there was another angle to this nausea. I was actually sick of loving him. I was physically winded by so much revelation and gave a short, noisy gasp. Luckily for me no one was near enough to notice.
It
was then, right on cue, that a dark-haired woman I knew vaguely appeared from the kitchen with a fatuous grin on her face. ‘Harriet,’ she said, giggling, ‘your handbag’s making a funny noise.’
I
escaped to the kitchen, glad of the diversion. The evening was deteriorating rapidly. Even a call-out had to be preferable to this humiliation and all it portended. So I welcomed the sound of the handbag bleeping insistently and fished out the small paging device I carry when I’m on call. In response to pressure on the green button it obediently flashed up its message.
Mr
Carnforth
,
piles
bleeding
,
in
a
lot
of
pain
.