Without a Trace (11 page)

‘Put like that, I suppose it isn’t,’ Molly said reluctantly. ‘But Cassie was so independent.’

‘It is very hard for any woman to be truly independent,’ George said reprovingly. ‘They don’t get paid the same as men, most have problems getting childcare, and there’s very little sympathy for an unmarried mother.’

‘That’s very modern of you,’ said Molly with a touch of sarcasm. ‘I never expected a boy I went to school with in Sawbridge to have sympathies with women’s problems.’

He smirked. ‘I’m not brave enough to voice them in the pub, though, so that makes me look like a knight in rusty armour.’

After the sadness of the funeral and the bad feeling at home, Molly was glad to put it all aside and just enjoy being with George. Despite knowing him all her life, she hadn’t realized that he’d seen action in Germany after he was called up in 1944. She remembered, of course, him leaving the village, bound for an army camp to train, along with a couple of other local boys who were eighteen, too, and all called up together. For some reason she’d imagined he spent his time working in stores or something, because he never said a word about his experiences when he returned after the war was over. It pleased her that he was so modest, never seeking glory or feeling the need to boast. She realized she had underestimated her old schoolfriend.

‘Then I joined the police force after I was demobbed,’ he said. ‘That snotty friend of yours, Simon, said it was because I needed to follow orders, like I was some half-wit, but at least
I’m doing something worthwhile, not just sitting at a desk scribbling like him.’

‘He’s rubbed you up the wrong way,’ Molly said with a smile. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve become, like so many around here, suspicious of strangers?’

‘I’ve got nothing against strangers, or even writers. I just don’t like the way he brags,’ George said. ‘He was holding forth in the pub about how he got wounded in Normandy, then when he recovered he went out to India to teach English. He spoke as if none of us had done anything and never been anywhere.’

‘I haven’t found him like that,’ she said, but, in truth, Simon had been a bit dismissive of some of the locals. ‘But you kept it very quiet about being in Germany. I didn’t know that.’

‘Everyone was doing something during the war,’ he said. ‘I don’t think many of us knew what our old friends were up to.’

‘I’d have written to you if I’d known,’ she said. ‘I suppose I thought you were stuck out at Aldershot or somewhere.’

George grinned. ‘The night before I left there was a dance in the village. You were with John Partridge all evening – I couldn’t even get one dance with you. I expected you to be married to him by the time I got home again.’

‘John Partridge!’ Molly exclaimed. ‘He had goofy teeth and sticking-out ears! I only danced with him that night because I felt sorry for him. And I’m glad I did, because the poor man was killed by a V2 in early 1945. He was only in London for an interview.’

George’s smile vanished. ‘Gosh, yes, I’d forgotten about that. What bad luck! My mother wrote and told me. He was going to become a priest, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s what he wanted to do, but he’d already been turned down by both Oxford and Cambridge, so that interview he was going for was for some far lesser college or training place.’

‘Fate is a strange thing,’ George said thoughtfully. ‘We could be driving back to Sawbridge this afternoon and die in a car crash. Or I could get shot by some hoodlum tonight when I go on duty. You just never know what’s in store for you.’

‘A cheerful thought,’ Molly said. ‘But if I don’t get home soon I know what will be in store for me. Dad will be on the war path.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Four days after the funeral Enoch Flowers came into the shop. Molly had been surprised to see him at Cassie’s funeral. He hadn’t spoken to her there, not even a nod, but that wasn’t unusual, as he was famously silent.

Molly thought he looked like a gnome: short and tubby with a slightly too large head and deep creases in his face, like an apple that has been kept too long. No one knew exactly how old he was, but it was generally thought he was in his seventies. Yet he still ran his farm alone, milking over thirty cows a day, along with all the other chores.

As usual, he was wearing a very worn tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, moleskin trousers held in at the ankles with gaiters and a grubby neckerchief of indeterminate colour. He brought into the shop with him a farmyard smell, and Mrs Parsons, who was getting Molly to slice some bacon rashers, wrinkled her nose in disgust.

‘Good to see you, Mr Flowers,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’

Mrs Parson normally lingered to gossip after paying for her groceries, but the smell got too much for her and she hurried out, still with a wrinkled nose.

‘I come to see if you want to go up to Stone Cottage and go through the young lass’s things, take anything you’ve got a mind to?’ Mr Flowers growled at Molly in his strong Somerset accent.

Molly almost asked him to repeat what he’d said. She couldn’t really believe she’d heard right.

‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ she said cautiously, wondering if there was some kind of catch to his offer.

‘Well, you were the only pal she did have, and I knows she appreciated your kindness. There ain’t nothing there of value, but it struck me you was the kind to want a keepsake.’

Molly was astounded that he could be so sensitive, and that he’d obviously had a soft spot for Cassie. ‘I’d like that. I really miss her,’ she said. ‘And maybe I could take a few of Petal’s things, just in case the police find her?’

‘I don’t hold out much hope of that,’ he said. ‘Pretty little thing she were, too, a credit to her ma. I miss ’em both; they used to come up to the farm for milk and eggs. Always smiling, the littl’un. Her ma was a good’un an’all. She’d have made a fine farmer’s wife.’

Such warmth from a man who normally communicated in grunts was astounding, and it made Molly glow to hear her friend praised.

‘I wish everyone in this village was as kind about her. I find it very sad that they can’t even say something nice now she’s dead, or even show concern for Petal.’

‘Most folks is like that,’ he said. ‘I’ve had plenty said about me. Anyways, Miss March came here to hide away from someone. I reckon he tracked her down. He’ll have killed Petal now and buried her someplace,’ he said.

‘I’m really hoping that isn’t the case.’

Flowers grimaced. ‘I don’t reckon he knew she had a kid till he got to the cottage. What else could he do with her? You can’t let a kid tag along with you when you’ve just killed her ma.’

‘Cassie never told me she was hiding from someone,’ Molly said.

‘Nor me, but I’ve been around long enough to recognize the signs. Any road, I gotta go now. I’ve left the key under a stone by the pump. You take what you want and I’ll get rid of the rest.’

After Mr Flowers had left Molly went outside the shop to arrange the fruit and vegetables more neatly, and to let his smell disperse through the open door. She wondered what would be a good keepsake. As far as she remembered, Cassie didn’t have anything remarkable.

She was just picking over the vegetables and taking out anything which looked past its best when her father came out of the shop. He stood in the doorway, puffing on his pipe and watching her. ‘Your mother will make some soup with that lot,’ he said curtly, looking down at the basket she was putting the rejected vegetables in.

‘Okay,’ she said, though no response was really needed, because her mother always made soup with anything they took up to her.

‘Were you off with that writer fellow after the funeral?’ he asked.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘In case you go making a fool of yourself over him,’ he said. ‘He’s married.’

That was news to Molly, Simon had implied he was single. It was so typical of her father to try and humiliate her. He must have heard some gossip that she and Simon were friendly and decided to put a spanner in the works. The most annoying thing about it was that it stung. She had daydreamed about the man and, even though she knew she
wasn’t the kind of girl he’d go for, if he’d asked her out, she would’ve gone.

‘I’m not likely to make a fool of myself over any man,’ she said sharply. ‘I’ve got more self-respect.’

‘I was just warning you. I heard in the pub last night that his wife came looking for him. Seems he’d walked out on her.’

‘Fancy that,’ she said, picking up the basket of vegetables. ‘Excuse me. I’ll take these up to Mum.’

She didn’t go upstairs, but went out into the backyard and sat on the bench in the sun to gather herself.

It didn’t make any real difference to her that Simon was married, or that he’d walked out on his wife. Apart from a couple of friendly chats, there was nothing between them, whatever her father thought. He must’ve had his reasons for leaving his wife – she, of all people, understood that no one knew what went on behind closed doors.

But what this news had done was remind her that she could be an awful fool when it came to men, and that, if Simon had made a play for her, she’d probably be putty in his hands, just the way she’d been with Andy Soames.

Andy was a bricklayer. He’d come into the shop when he was building a new house just outside the village. She was nineteen then; he was twenty-five: tall, blond, blue-eyed and, to her eyes, utter perfection. He had flirted with her as he bought a pork pie and some apples for his lunch.

That afternoon she had taken off her shop overall, brushed her hair and put on some lipstick. A quarter of tea had been accidentally left out of a delivery to Mrs Rawlings that morning, so Molly told her mother she was going to drop it in to her. The house Andy was working on was, conveniently, in the same direction as the Rawlings place.

Andy was standing on the scaffolding around the half-built house. He’d taken his shirt off because it was a hot day, and the sight of his bronzed bare chest with its rippling muscles made her feel quite faint.

‘Out for a walk?’ he called out, leaning on the scaffolding rail and smiling down at her.

‘Taking this round to a customer,’ she called back, waving the tea. ‘It’s far too nice to be stuck in the shop this afternoon.’

He moved suddenly, catching hold of one of the vertical scaffold poles, and shinned down it at the speed of light.

‘That was impressive,’ she said. ‘You didn’t even look as if you were hanging on.’

‘A trick of the trade,’ he said, flashing a wide smile that showed his startlingly white teeth.

She ought to have known right then that he was out of her league. Men that looked like him wouldn’t fall for a girl like her. But when he said he would walk with her to deliver the tea and perhaps take a stroll across the fields, she stupidly imagined he was smitten by her.

He kissed her as soon as they were in a field and tried to persuade her to lie down in the grass with him. His kiss sent her reeling, and she might have lain down with him if her father hadn’t been expecting her back at the shop. As it turned out, after three or four such incidents, she began to see that all he wanted from her was sex. He never asked her out. Not a night out at the pictures or a dance when he was washed, shaved and in smart clothes. All he ever offered was a walk during the day, when he was all dirty and smelling of sweat. Yet each time she agreed to meet him up the road she came very close to losing her virginity.

It was purely the fear of having a baby that stopped her
going the whole way. She knew her father would throw her out if she fell pregnant and, anyway, she’d seen other girls she’d gone to school with either being made to marry the boy responsible or sent away in disgrace and having the baby adopted.

But she had wanted him so much. Just the thought of his kisses made her tremble and her stomach flip over. Three weeks later his work in the village was finished, and he never even came to say goodbye to her.

It was a harsh lesson. She cried at night for weeks, feeling cheap and used. But maybe it was a worthwhile lesson, because she had never let any other man or boy treat her that way since. Of course, Cassie had said she saw nothing wrong in having sex before marriage, as long as you made sure the man used a Durex. As Molly couldn’t imagine ever being bold enough to ask a man if he had one, she had told herself she wasn’t ever going to go that far. Yet even at Cassie’s funeral she’d been having erotic thoughts about Simon. If he had made a pass at her, might she have succumbed? She thought, to her shame, that it was likely.

A little later that morning her mother came into the shop and, between customers, Molly told her about Enoch Flowers.

‘My word, that’s a turn-up!’ her mother exclaimed. ‘He doesn’t normally give anyone the time of day.’

‘He’s a bit of an outcast – I expect that’s why he understood Cassie,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll go up to the cottage after we close and look around.’

Mary looked anxious. ‘I don’t like to think of you up there alone,’ she said.

‘Don’t be daft, Mum. The person who killed Cassie and took Petal won’t be hanging around there looking for another victim.’

‘Perhaps not, but go now and get it over with.’