Out Comes the Evil Read online

  When she heard the door to the rest of the house close, she put down the glass and covered her face with her hands. This was bizarre, creepy, frightening. When her breathing slowed, she went to a window overlooking the paved area in front of this wing. The windows were of an oddly wavy glass that distorted everything. She tucked herself against a wall to one side, listened, and occasionally took a careful look out. Venetia Stroud had said the garages were below Harry’s flat so she’d have to come this way.

  What if she was being picked up?

  Alex cracked a window open. She would hear the big gates if they opened. Wouldn’t she?

  Why not ask Tony to come for her? Venetia wouldn’t think anything of it if she was still here when he arrived. It would be perfectly normal. She reached for her phone in a back jeans’ pocket.

  Not there.

  She ran her hands over the green hand chair and looked underneath. Nothing. Where could she have dropped it? Surely she would have felt it happen – except that her mind had been all over the place.

  There was no phone in the library, or in the kitchen or large living area. Not hers, or one belonging to Harry.

  Her heart bumped when she saw what she’d missed on a kitchen counter, more or less hidden by a chrome basket of brightly painted wooden eggs. A mobile. She hurried to snatch it up and turn the thing over and punch the first button she saw. Where was the key pad?

  Greensleeves … The first notes of the ballad, played on a piano, spilled out.

  Alex stared at it and had to lower her head against sudden faintness. It wasn’t a mobile but one of those small recorders some people used. She hit rewind, turned off and slid it close to the egg basket once more.

  She had another, disjointed thought. Vivian and Pamela had been really close. It was Vivian they needed to talk to and find out what she knew about Pamela’s life. The two of them rode together and had a lot in common. Surely Vivian would know what Pamela had been up to lately, and with whom.

  Later, Alex told herself. She had to stay focused. Another look from a window showed no movement and she heard nothing.

  She could just walk out. Probably down the stairs to Harry’s front door here would be easiest so she didn’t have to find her way through the house. But she wished she weren’t alone.

  Beyond the library were several more doors. He must have a phone in his bedroom. The first door led to a white bathroom with both shower and bath, and an atmosphere of never having been used. Windows in the next room were covered with white wood shutters on the inside. The room contained only a good deal of luggage, tidily stored in matching sets, and a number of wooden crates that were still nailed shut.

  Across the hall two more doors were locked. She turned from them at once, panic closing her throat, and went to another set of floor to ceiling double doors. This must be Harry’s bedroom.

  The handles wouldn’t budge.

  Alex backed away, turned and ran to the front door, almost tripping on the stairs. Bolts top and bottom were easy to slide open. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears but she took a deep breath and tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. Rattling and pulling made no difference.

  The deadbolt! It opened and she tried again, but looking at the door higher up she saw evidence of another deadbolt, this one with no visible means of opening from the inside. Who installed something like that except on a storeroom?

  This wasn’t her way out.

  She didn’t want to see Harry, or be questioned by him.

  Back up she went, running, her leather soles were slick on the marble but she ran anyway. She should have come this way first.

  The door they’d come in by was padded with buttoned silver material on the inside.

  And it was locked from the outside.

  FIFTEEN

  The wind snatched what was left of withered leaves and dead twigs among the new tree growth and turned them into projectiles. Tony tugged up the collar on his coat, put his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders.

  Walking from his house on the far edge of the Dimple, as they called a wide oval dip where several houses nestled on large, heavily treed lots, down the hill and across the green into Folly gave him good thinking time. Katie stayed by his side. She wasn’t a stormy weather lover. He would check on the Burke sisters’ new inmate then go to the Dog. Alex would give him a lift home. It didn’t matter which home …

  He had to circle the pond to come to the gap between cottages and the road in front of the Black Dog.

  Going straight in to find Alex was tempting, but Maxwell Aloysius Brady needed his wound checked.

  Katie headed for the pub.

  Tony whistled her back and put on her lead. He did take a look down the side of the building and his spirits lifted at the sight of a light glinting off the windscreen of Alex’s Land Rover.

  ‘C’mon, girl, let’s get business over … before we deal with more business, or whatever.’ To Katie’s delight, he broke into a run. He knew every crack and dip in the pavement and didn’t worry about the encroaching darkness.

  When he turned in at the path in front of Leaves of Comfort, he couldn’t miss the silhouettes of Harriet and Mary sitting at a table close to the tea-shop window. He had telephoned ahead but afraid to shock them, he still called out. Harriet’s hearing was excellent and she got up immediately to let him in.

  ‘Sorry I’m so late,’ he told her. ‘Should I leave Katie tied up out here?’

  ‘Bring her in. Oliver’s shut in upstairs and we should see how Maxwell behaves around dogs.’

  ‘He’s already met Katie. She’s a fair nurse when she wants to be.’ He went in, took off his coat and accepted the mug of coffee Mary held up to him. ‘Thanks. Where’s the new boy?’

  ‘Here,’ Mary said, pointing at her lap.

  He hadn’t noticed the battered orange cat tucked into a woolen, child-sized quilt, his good eye tightly closed.

  ‘Nap time,’ Mary said. ‘He’s been asleep most of the day, but I think he’s settling in already.’

  Harriet snorted. ‘How do we know when he’s asleep most of the time?’

  ‘Oliver’s given him a good look over. He’s not impressed but there’s been no hissing yet, either. We’ll get them sorted out.’

  ‘May I have a look?’ Tony pulled a chair close to Mary’s and she lifted Maxwell into his arms.

  ‘The wound’s healing nicely,’ he said, pleased there was no sign of infection. He’d brought his stethoscope in his pocket and listened to the animal’s heart and lungs. ‘Everything sounds good. He’s bound to be exhausted. Did he find the litter box on his own?’

  Approaching fussily, Katie gave the cat a good sniff. Apparently satisfied, she slid to the floor under Tony’s chair.

  ‘No problem with the litter box,’ Harriet said. ‘And he’s eating for England. We don’t believe in letting our cats outside so he’ll have to get used to that.’

  While Tony stroked fur that might be silky once it was clean, Maxwell opened his one golden eye to peer at him, yawned wide enough to show a full complement of very good teeth and crawled back to Mary who promptly wrapped him up in his bright wool blanket again.

  ‘I want him to continue his antibiotics for a few more days,’ Tony said and put a bottle on the table. ‘He did have a shot but these are pills. Give them to him in bits of soft food. I’ll call back again in a couple of days unless you decide I should come sooner.’

  ‘Does Alex know we’ve got him?’ Harriet looked worried. ‘I wondered if we should have told her what we were going to do.’

  ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil,’ Mary said, smiling fondly at her sister. ‘We were afraid Alex wouldn’t think we were up to looking after two cats so we nipped over to your surgery nice and early.’

  ‘She’s glad you’ve taken him in.’ It was a slight fabrication but in a good cause.

  The only lights on downstairs were two sconces behind the kitchen display cases. Tony gulped his coffee, thinking how peaceful the place
was. He had hoped Folly would stay unspoiled for a very long time. Vicious killings weren’t what he’d had in mind.

  ‘Can I ask you something personal?’ Mary said, a gentle, gnarled old hand repeatedly smoothing Maxwell’s head. ‘We never said anything before and it must have been well more than five years since you came back from Australia. Did you and Penny get a divorce? We’ve been sad about it because we know how much in love you were. Oh, dear …’ She bowed her head. ‘I’ve overstepped the mark.’

  It overwhelmed Tony to hear the questions that hadn’t been asked directly in all this time. Not by anyone outside his family. He rested his elbows on the table and rubbed his forefingers between his eyebrows. After he got back to Folly, the locals had not needed to ask if something had gone wrong with his marriage, that or they kept schtum out of respect for his dad, the general practitioner they had trusted for so many years.

  ‘Don’t be angry,’ Harriet said tentatively. ‘Alex has had a bad time. We think it was a lot worse than we know. And we think she … well, we think she might care for you … a lot.’

  Smiling probably wasn’t the appropriate reaction but he smiled anyway, glancing from one old lady to the other. Best not to tell them he reciprocated Alex’s feelings – if they were right about hers, that was. ‘Penny drowned in a diving accident. We had a boat. She loved to go out there alone and read on the deck. That day she went diving alone and those aren’t safe waters without a partner. I don’t like talking about it.’

  Mary took off her thick glasses to wipe tears away with a lace handkerchief. ‘Poor young things. That’s terrible.’

  ‘We were probably moving toward a divorce anyway, but … God, it was horrible. I wanted her to move on and be happy. Alex knows about it, and Lily, and my dad, of course.’

  ‘We won’t be talking about it.’ Harriet poured more coffee before he could stop her. ‘I’m glad you and Alex found each other again. You know … no, that’s enough said. But if you ever want to talk about losing someone, we’re here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘But that’s all a long way in the past for us. Have you seen Vivian Seabrook yet?’

  Harriet looked uncomfortable. ‘She was brought back to the parish hall in a police car early in the afternoon. Wasn’t a few minutes before she walked past here. She looked tired, and angry. I called the Dog to warn Alex she might be coming that way to make some sort of trouble but Alex was out on an errand. The police came back around asking more questions, too. Why would they think we’d have more to say if they gave us a second chance? They must think we’ve got another life we don’t usually talk about.’

  Processing the pieces of what they were saying didn’t add up to a comforting picture. ‘I’m going over to Alex now,’ he said. ‘She seems like a rock, as if nothing would shake her. But I see the cracks sometimes. What happened to her before … she lost too much and she’s still coming to terms with it. I don’t want anyone upsetting her. I’m not going to let anyone upset her.’

  ‘Doc James and your mother raised a good boy, Tony Harrison.’ Harriet waited for him to put on his jacket and pull slumbering Katie from beneath the chair. ‘Get yourself over there and look after Alex.’

  Tony set off from Leaves of Comfort with Katie pulling enthusiastically at the lead. She wiggled from nose to tail. ‘In a hurry to get in the warm?’ Tony said. Katie always expected to go to the pub and she often got her wish.

  Driven by the wind, a tall Goldenrod bush slapped stalks into his face. He moved to the outside of the pavement, away from the cottage gardens. March had certainly blustered in. Dark and heavy, low clouds pushed down acrid chimney smoke that stung his eyes.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ a woman said from behind him.

  Swinging around, he was literally face-to-face with Vivian Seabrook. Even in near darkness she was easy to recognize and the moon had risen behind the clouds to add a little silver to the scene.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Right here?’

  ‘This is a good place. We’re not likely to be interrupted. I’ve been waiting for you. You came up to where we were all sitting at the Dog the other night. Alex was already there. Did she tell you what we’d been talking about?’

  He frowned at her. ‘I think if you’ve got questions for Alex, you should ask her.’

  ‘Simple question, dammit.’ She took deep breaths. ‘And I’m asking you, not her. She follows you like a puppy. Stands to reason she tells you everything. What did Alex say about me afterward? Someone made a suggestion to the police that got me hauled off like a common criminal. I’m not amused, Tony, and I want to know who did that. They’d have had to twist something to put the plods on me.’

  ‘Alex wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

  ‘An Irish Hunter – Pamela Gibbon’s as a matter of fact – kicked the outside door to her stall into me. Sent me flying and I got grazes on my wrists, among other places. Someone blew that up into how I could have been injured killing Pamela rather than a horse doing something to me – which is too bloody stupid to imagine – and I got whisked off. I’ve been through everyone who was there and the only one who’s cozy with the detectives is Alex. I’m not making anything of them being comfortable together – not my business – but what would you think if you were me?’

  ‘Did O’Reilly and Lamb talk about the injuries?’

  ‘Of course they bloody did. I just said so.’

  ‘Anyone there could have made a comment to them. How many people have you told? And Alex isn’t cozy with O’Reilly and Lamb. Alex is polite to everyone.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me what I need to know but you’re obviously going to cover for her. I’m going over to the Dog myself. Almost went earlier but I needed some sleep after what I’ve been put through. I phoned Mr and Mrs Derwinter to explain and they aren’t too happy with her, I can tell you. Pamela and I were best friends. We were very close. She was one of the reasons I came here.’

  Furious, Tony set off again and Vivian strode beside him. ‘I’m not covering for Alex,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t done anything. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me arrange for you to meet in private. If you’re still sure that’s what you want to push for.’

  ‘I make my own decisions.’

  Katie stayed as far ahead as the lead would reach all the way to the Black Dog. When they got there, Tony opened the door and let the lead go. Katie disappeared into the bar.

  Keeping his voice low, Tony asked, ‘Why would Alex do that to you, Vivian? Why would she try to hurt you?’

  ‘I don’t think you know why, Tony, and you won’t like it when you find out. But I’d rather not be the one to tell you.’

  ‘Stop playing games. What have you got against Alex? What has she ever done to you?’

  ‘I’ve got my sources, too,’ Vivian said. ‘And I won’t be repeating what I’ve been told to you, Tony. But I will say that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It’s not original but it fits. I’m not coming in now. I need to think some more. You can tell Alex I expect an explanation.’

  ‘Tell her yourself—’

  ‘What were you doing up at the manor last night? Really doing? We’ve only got your word for the reason you were there.’

  Tony ignored her and went toward the door.

  The pub was blessedly warm. Vivian had hurried away before he got inside and he walked into the bar with a sense of dread. The woman wanted someone to blame for her misfortune and had singled Alex out as a troublemaker. Vivian obviously had the tenacity to hang on to her theory – until it could be disproved.

  As he would have expected, the bar was crammed and the babble had reached a deafening pitch. Tony’s dad stood at the bar with his back to him and Tony threaded a path in his direction, nodding to people as he went. Katie had already reached her target, the fire.

  ‘Hey Tony,’ Kev Winslet, the Derwinters’ gamekeeper said, pushing his florid face into Tony’s. ‘Another right balls up, eh? What are they thinking? Not very likely to have t
wo separate deadly crimes in a little place like this, is it?’

  Kev smelled like a brewery. ‘What do you mean?’ Tony said.

  ‘They’re connected, aren’t they? Didn’t the police say it’s too much of a coincidence yet? I must say I’m surprised they’ve latched on to Vivian so quickly, though. She’s a piece of work. I always knew there was something not right with her, but murder?’

  ‘Vivian’s been released,’ Tony said. ‘She’s back home.’ That’s all he intended to say.

  ‘Alex went to the Tits and Ass meeting—’

  ‘You’d better not let any of the women hear you say that.’

  Kev guffawed. ‘What’s it stand for, then? TA. They think they’re being clever. What did Alex let on about it? I heard some of ’em cried when they heard about Pamela.’ He stopped grinning. ‘She was all right, Pamela. She didn’t have much to hold onto except money and they say that won’t keep you warm at night. Some were too hard on her.’

  Including you.

  Lily came through from the empty restaurant and raised a hand to attract Tony’s attention.

  He said, ‘Excuse me,’ to Winslet and caught up with Lily beside his dad. Polishing a glass, Hugh went to them and waited for their order.

  ‘Hello, Lily, Dad,’ Tony said. ‘Heard anything useful?’

  They both shook their heads. Lily looked miserable. ‘I know what happened to Pamela is all we should be worrying about, but you’d have to have ice water in your veins not to feel threatened. I don’t think Vivian could have done it, do you?’

  ‘She didn’t,’ Tony said. ‘And she’s back home. Apparently someone gave the police bad information about her.’ He wasn’t about to mention that Vivian had tried to blame Alex.

  ‘What will you have?’ Hugh said and Tony noticed for the first time how strained the man looked.

  ‘Lily?’ Tony said.

  ‘Nothing for me.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ his dad said.

  ‘Lagavulin, neat,’ Tony said. ‘Feels like a Scotch night.’