The Girl by the River (15 page)

‘Daisy!’ said Tessa. ‘She’s enormous.’

‘Here we are. Look!’ Kate found what she’d been looking for, a sepia picture of her father, Bertie, as a young man, smartly dressed in breeches, long boots, a tweed jacket and
cap. At his feet was a small white terrier, exactly like Jonti.

Kate watched Tessa’s expression and saw a smile of delight come as she stared at the old photograph. She looked intently at Kate. ‘That’s the man who gave me Jonti,’ she
said firmly, ‘and his eyes sparkled, Mummy, like yours.’

Kate felt goosebumps prickle her skin. ‘So . . . where was Jonti when you first saw him?’

‘In that man’s arms,’ she said, ‘but then he was waiting for me on the lawn when I escaped.’

‘You escaped?’

‘I climbed out of the bathroom window,’ Tessa said, and her eyes changed. ‘I’m not telling you any more, Mummy. I want to play with Jonti.’

Kate wheeled her bike into the road. It was a new bike, a Raleigh, with a basket on the front and a Sturmey-Archer three speed. Freddie had given it to her for Christmas and
she’d hardly used it. She felt conspicuous on it, sitting up so straight and high above the road, dressed in her black jacket with the wide shoulder pads, her red, ruffled blouse, black skirt
and black court shoes.

‘Don’t you go down there on your own,’ Freddie had said. ‘That would be madness – asking for trouble.’

But Kate didn’t care. She intended to confront Ivor Stape while the maternal savagery was on fire inside her mind. She was used to dealing with all sorts of characters from her nursing
days. She’d thought about asking Joan or even Lexi to go with her, but Kate worried about gossip. If Tessa had been raped, Kate wanted it kept a secret. She didn’t want it haunting
Tessa’s life, bringing shame on the family. So, with Lucy in school, and Freddie up at the quarry, she’d cajoled Annie into keeping an eye on Tessa, and Annie had promised not to
question her.

‘So where are you going, dressed up like that?’ Annie asked suspiciously.

‘It’s private business. I won’t be long,’ Kate told her.

Kate was so angry that she pedalled energetically, and sailed down to the mill. With her dark hair flying and her cheeks rosy, she swept over the millstream bridge and around the corner to the
entrance, skidding to a halt outside the high wrought-iron gates. They were closed, and apparently locked. She searched for a bell to ring but there wasn’t one. She propped her bike against
the wall, and looked through at the gloomy garden. Had Tessa really swum across that sinister pool? And why? It was still a mystery. Tessa had been silent all the morning, talking only in whispers
to the dog. She’d refused to talk to Doctor Jarvis and allowed him only to feel her pulse and listen to her breathing. Wisely, he hadn’t put pressure on her. ‘She seems all
right,’ he’d said. ‘We must give her a chance to rest and recover.’

Kate loved Tessa, but she also wanted to shake her. Instead, she shook the iron gates. ‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Mr Stape. Are you there?’

Silence.

Kate unclipped the tyre pump from her bike and used it to bang the iron gates. It made an arresting kind of clang. From inside the house, the basset hounds set up a booming, howling bark. She
saw them standing up against the window sill, their throats lifted like wolves. A movement deeper inside the room caught Kate’s eye – a bobbing, evasive shadow of someone who wanted to
hide.

Her heart pounded hard against the iron gates. She wasn’t going to give up. ‘Will you come out please, Mr Stape? I want to talk to you.’

No response. She heard Ivor Stape roar at the dogs. ‘Quiet!’ They stopped barking instantly, and disappeared from the window. Kate pictured them slinking under the furniture, their
tails drooping.

‘I’m not going to go away, Mr Stape,’ she called, ‘and if you don’t come out and open these gates for me, I shall climb over the wall and come in.’

Silence. Kate looked up at the wall and noticed a place where a stone was missing. She could put her foot in there, hold on to the clump of valerian growing at the top, and swing herself over,
like mounting a horse, and she’d done enough of that in her life.

‘Mr Stape, I want to speak to you, and if you don’t let me in, you’ll be sorry,’ she called, and rapped on the iron gates with the bicycle pump, harder and louder.
‘I am going to count to ten, and if you’re not out here, I’m coming over that wall. One – two – three – four—’

A door flew open at the side of the house, and a stocky little man emerged. He had broad, burly shoulders, wild grey hair, and the whites of his eyes glimmered under a bushy frown that made the
top of his head look like a hat. His hands twitched at his sides and a ferocious pipe hung from his lips.

Kate drew herself up and stood very straight, glad of the shoulder pads and the high-heeled shoes. She wasn’t tall, but she felt empowered by a sense of justice.

Ivor Stape came towards her. She saw the ferocious pipe in detail, and it was a model of a bull’s head. An Aberdeen Angus, Kate thought. All part of the image. He stood inside the gate,
puffing smoke, and trying not to look at the determined young woman who was searching the cobwebbed corners of his soul with magnetic, bright brown eyes.

‘I’m Mrs Barcussy,’ Kate said, ‘and I will not have a conversation with you through this gate. Will you please open it and let me in?’

Ivor Stape fished in the pocket of his tweed jacket and produced a key. He unlocked the gate and held it open for her while she tried to get his evasive eyes to look at her. Once inside, she
stood facing him, took a deep breath, and managed to be civil.

‘Mr Stape, I’d like you to tell me how my little girl came to be here yesterday, and why she was found on the other side of the bridge, freezing cold, frightened, and with no clothes
on. And I want her clothes back, please, right now.’

Ivor Stape looked at the floor, so that Kate only saw the top of his head. ‘You’d better come in,’ he mumbled, clenching the pipe between surly lips. ‘Follow me, and
don’t mind the dogs. They won’t hurt you.’

‘I’m not afraid of dogs. I’m a farmer’s daughter.’

Kate strutted beside him, her heart beating hard and fast. What would Freddie say if he saw her? But I’m doing it.
You’d be proud of me, Daddy.
Thinking of her dad helped Kate
to imagine herself protected as Ivor Stape led her to the house and into a porch thickly covered in the glossy leaves of Virginia creeper. She heard a bird singing back in the garden as she
followed him inside.

The room he led her into was a complete surprise. So unexpected that Kate momentarily lost her iron resolve and stood in the doorway, her mouth open, her eyes gazing in disbelief at what she
saw.

INSIDE THE MILL HOUSE

‘Where’s Kate?’ Freddie asked, sitting down at the table for his mid-morning cup of tea.

‘She’s gone off on her bike, dressed up like a dog’s dinner.’ Annie put the steaming mug of tea in Freddie’s hand. ‘She said it was private business, and she
wouldn’t be long. But she’s been gone an hour already.’

Freddie immediately had a nasty feeling about where Kate had gone. He’d taken a detour and called at the mill himself early that morning on his way to the quarry, but the gates were
locked. The house looked closed up, its curtains drawn, and everything quiet in the morning sun. Freddie walked around the perimeter, looking for another way in, but there wasn’t one, only a
narrow animal track going under the wall. Like Kate, he considered getting over the wall, but Herbie was waiting in the cab of the lorry, his elbow out of the window, his eyes puzzled and a bit
impatient.

‘I wouldn’t bother going in there,’ Herbie advised. ‘He’s a curmudgeonly old crank. Got two bloodhounds, they say. Have yer arm off, they would.’

Freddie hadn’t told Herbie why he wanted to go in there. He and Kate had agreed on secrecy. No one must know what might have happened to Tessa. Keeping a secret wasn’t easy in
Monterose, and he wanted to talk to Tessa himself, find out the truth before taking action.

Tessa was squatting on the lawn, painting a cardboard box with her Reeves paint box and a tiny brush. ‘I’m making Jonti a bed,’ she said, and Jonti wagged his tail
obligingly.

‘Can I do a bit?’ Freddie asked.

‘You can do that bit,’ Tessa said, and she looked up at him. Her eyes were calm. ‘Paint an elm tree, Daddy.’

Freddie took the brush and dipped it in the tablet marked
Viridian
. ‘An elm tree is like a cottage loaf,’ he said. ‘It’s got a big curly bit, then a small one on
top, and a smaller one on top of that, and it’s not just green. It’s got light and shade in it.’

Tessa watched intently, her mouth open in awe as he painted the elm tree and added blue shadows and flecks of white. ‘Ooh, Daddy – it looks real,’ she said.

‘Me tea’s getting cold.’ Freddie gave the paint brush back to her. ‘You paint some grass underneath – otherwise it looks as if it’s flying up in the air,
don’t it?’

Tessa giggled, and set about painting the blades of grass, while Freddie sat on the lawn drinking his tea and stroking Jonti thoughtfully. The way to get Tessa talking was to work with her,
painting, or gardening, or polishing wood. He needed time to spend with her, especially today. When her hands were busy, she would talk. Watching her carefully painting Jonti’s name in
Prussian Blue
, Freddie felt torn in two. Herbie was waiting for him up at the alabaster quarry, and Herbie was paying him. But right now, being a dad felt urgent and important. He was the
one who best understood Tessa’s mysterious mind.

‘That man has got specimens all over his house,’ Tessa said, pronouncing the word ‘specimens’ with relish, ‘even in the bathroom.’

‘Oh, ah,’ said Freddie. He didn’t like the sound of ‘specimens’. His mind conjured up ghoulish body parts in jars. His brother, George, had had his appendix out,
and the hospital had let him bring it home, pickled, in a jam jar. A horrible, grey, grub of a thing proudly displayed on George’s mantelpiece, so horrible that Freddie made sure he sat with
his back to it when he visited George.

‘AND . . .’ Tessa’s eyes widened with the drama, ‘one of them is millions and millions and MILLIONS of years old.’

Freddie kept quiet and listened in horror. An appendix that was millions of years old?

Kate was disinclined to give Ivor Stape credit for anything, but she detected a surprising note of respect in his manner when he invited her to sit down. ‘Thank you, but
I’d rather stand,’ she said, thinking she would look more intimidating standing up. ‘And first I’d like my daughter’s clothes, please. Where are they?’

‘I’ll get them.’

She heard him go upstairs, slowly, as if his legs were painful. It gave her the chance to stare around the room which had quarry tiles and a beamed ceiling. Three windows on each side looked out
into the garden, and there was an inglenook fireplace. There was one armchair, like an island in a labyrinth of tables. On one table was a black typewriter, piles of notebooks, and a bottle of
Quink. On another was an electric flat iron, standing on a pad of linen, plugged in as if it had just been used. The basset hounds lay on a rug at one end, growling at each other as they gnawed
loudly at two gigantic bones.

What amazed Kate were the stones arranged over the table tops and window sills, some twinkling with crystal, some smoother, others with spiral patterns set into them. Kate’s education had
included geography, but not geology, and she had no idea what crystals and fossils were. She gazed at the collection in awe, noting that each stone had a neatly written label. What did this man do
with them?

Then she looked at the walls and gasped. Every available space was lined with bookshelves, maps and charts. He had more books than Kate had ever seen: old, expensive leatherbound volumes with
gold lettering, sets of navy blue encyclopaedias, shelves of poetry books and Shakespeare; new books stacked in toppling towers, piles of yellow National Geographic magazines. Kate found herself
imagining how Tessa would be completely entranced by a room such as this.
You’d never get her out
, Kate thought. She glanced at a dark green book with gold-rimmed pages which was
balanced on the arm of the chair. It was Hans Andersen. Had Tessa been in here, reading it?

The room smelled of dust and damp dog, and a ripe winey aroma from a crowd of bottles stashed under one of the tables. But there was another smell, a faint whiff of something that alarmed Kate.
She had noticed it on Tessa’s hair. It wasn’t tobacco. It was something Kate recognised from her nursing days. Gas. Chloroform gas, she was sure. What was this obviously educated man
doing with chloroform gas? Kate couldn’t see any evidence. Where was it coming from? She itched to walk around and peep into corners and cupboards, but the man was coming downstairs.

Again, she was dumfounded. He had put Tessa’s blue and white dress on a hanger. It looked freshly ironed. Her vest, knickers and socks were neatly folded and clean, and he had stuffed her
wet sandals with newspaper. Just seeing how small her clothes were caught Kate off guard and made her want to cry.

‘My daughter is seven years old.’ She glared at Ivor Stape. Then she lost control and snatched Tessa’s clothes from the chair where he had carefully put them. She clutched the
little dress to her heart, and felt the edges of an emotional tidal wave lapping at her strength as if suddenly she was made of sand.

‘I tried . . .’ Ivor Stape’s eyes looked at her for the first time. Guilty, Kate thought.

‘Don’t SPEAK to me.’ She held up her hand. ‘You – you DISGUST me.’

A wave of giddiness overwhelmed Kate. Her skin went cold and sweaty with terror. What if she passed out on Ivor Stape’s floor? No one knew where she was, and she had no control of the
giddiness. Clutching Tessa’s clothes, she sank into the chair, taking deep breaths, trying to hold onto consciousness.

She glimpsed Ivor Stape standing there looking alarmed, and oddly helpless. He started to talk fast. ‘I didn’t take your little girl, if that’s what you think,’ he said.
‘She came into my garden, through the tunnel. She was dripping wet and clearly terrified. The dogs scared her. I carried her in here and gave her a blanket and a cup of cocoa, and hung her
wet clothes by the stove.’