Suspicion Page 18

  Nervous about going in there alone, I felt bolder accompanying Julie. I needn’t have worried. No one gave me the cold shoulder, and Sue’s name wasn’t mentioned once. I was pleased to see Angela and we arranged to play tennis later on, assuming the weather stayed dry. A light steady rain had been falling all morning. It had stopped just before lunch, but the sky remained grey and overcast.

  At half past one, Nick came into the dining room. He didn’t betray by so much as a flicker of an eyebrow that he noticed me sitting there, but I knew he was pleased. Only as I stood up to leave did he look up and smile.

  ‘See you later,’ I said.

  Both of us behaved as though no unpleasantness had rocked the smooth running of our marriage, or our lives at the school.

  The rain stayed away, and I met Angela at three o’clock. We agreed to have a short knock up and not play a set for fear of slipping over, as the ground was still wet, not that she ever went full out against me anyway. She was a PE teacher and a tennis coach, while my skills stretched to a passable serve and the ability to hit a reasonably easy ball over the net. We played ostensibly to improve my game, but neither of us was really there to play tennis. Angela was no doubt pleased to be on good terms with the headmaster’s wife, while I was keen to find out everything I could from her about the staff and, more importantly, the gossip at school. So we hit a few balls around and then went to the staff room to make coffee, as usual. We had hardly run around at all. It was an easy, pleasant way to spend a couple of hours in convivial company.

  Angela must have been very pretty when she was younger. Even now she was attractive, in spite of pouches under her smiling blue eyes and a myriad of fine wrinkles in her skin. Being sporty, she had kept a youthful figure and moved gracefully, and she seemed to be permanently serene. Only on the tennis court did she display any sign of animation, shouting out encouragement and praise, and offering advice when my hits went wild.

  ‘Focus on the ball,’ she would call out, and ‘Follow through, always follow through!’

  When she wasn’t commenting on my tennis strokes, she bore an air of patient forbearance, as though she had suffered and survived. I actually knew little about her personal life, beyond the fact that she was divorced and childless. She must surely have been upset when she and her husband split up, but it was hard to imagine anything disturbing her equilibrium. I tried to picture her in a temper, hurling plates across the room at a shadowy figure of a man, but somehow I couldn’t envisage Angela as anything other than gently smiling, her mood shifting from serene to enthusiastic only when she was on the tennis court. Although I only ever saw her when she was in her comfort zone, it was difficult to believe she could be different in other circumstances. There was a consistency about her that was reassuring.

  As we sat over coffee, I wondered whether she had tried to picture my expression when I had composed nasty emails in a fit of jealous pique, as I had wondered about the depths that must surely lie hidden below her composure. But we didn’t speak of such matters. Delving beneath the surface of the human psyche is a dangerous game. We were better off playing tennis, and engaging in desultory chatter about school.

  Just as with restricted levels of access to the school database, there was information we were not allowed to share and, as long as we kept to permitted levels of communication, we could maintain our superficial friendship. Perhaps I should have accepted the same limitations in my relationship with Nick and taken our love at face value, without fretting over whether he was seeing anyone else. If I had left undisturbed whatever lay hidden between us, we might have skated over the darkness and followed an easier path through life.

  So Angela and I sat drinking coffee, and chatting companionably enough about the weather, minor improvements Nick was planning for the sports facilities, and gossiping about other staff, carefully avoiding the one topic that was probably uppermost in both our minds. We agreed to meet at the same time the following week, weather permitting, and parted with a friendly smile. Life definitely seemed to be returning to normal, at least for me.

  On my way home, I passed David by the abandoned cricket pavilion. He was walking in the opposite direction to me, and we stopped.

  ‘I heard you were back,’ he said, as though I had been away on holiday.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Me?’ He sounded surprised at the question. ‘Me? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  His response seemed to imply that of the two of us, he was not the one who had been unwell. Dismissing my suspicions as foolish paranoia, I smiled at him. David had always treated me with an old-fashioned courtesy which I found quaint and, at the same time, reassuring. Like Angela, he was predictable, which made him safe to be around. It was easy to see why he was so well respected, and even liked, by both pupils and staff. Even the younger teachers treated him with a good-natured tolerance, although they were often at loggerheads with some of the other more established members of staff.

  ‘Are you going away at all this summer?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head, his hazel eyes solemn. ‘I was planning a trip to Italy but, with all the difficulties that cropped up towards the end of term, and the additional workload that’s caused, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get away. I can usually just about manage to keep on top of things at this time of year when Mandy’s working for me full time, but she’s been up against it, taking some of the load off Julie, and now she’s away, and we’re nowhere near finalising the timetable. It’ll be a struggle to get it done in time for September. Of course I’m being hassled about it already. Some of the staff always want to know their commitments in advance, but they’re going to have to wait. I can’t work miracles. I hear you’ve been helping out with admin.’

  ‘A little.’ I smiled, pleased that my small contribution had been noticed.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not how you planned to spend your summer, stuck behind a desk, but it’s all hands to the pumps. The temp is doing what she can, and Julie’s doing a great job, but we’re all going to be under pressure until we find a suitable replacement for Nick’s secretary.’

  Like everyone else on site, he seemed to want to avoid mentioning Sue by name, and I appreciated his restraint. None of us wanted to think about what had happened. We chatted for a few minutes and then continued on our separate ways across the deserted cricket pitch.

  The clouds had drifted across the sky, allowing the sun to throw a shaft of golden light over the pitch. I breathed deeply, enjoying the transient perfume of summer: the smell of grass mingled with tantalisingly familiar scents that I couldn’t identify. On a sudden impulse I called the only person who could clear up the confusion that was still festering in my mind. I called her extension at work and was surprised when she answered straight away.

  ‘Rosie? This is Louise Kelly from Edleybury.’

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you–’ she began.

  ‘No, don’t refuse me again. You can’t. I just want to talk to you,’ I blurted out. ‘I have to see you.’

  Perhaps she responded to the urgent desperation in my voice but, whatever the reason, she didn’t hang up straight away and I seized the instant to throw myself on her mercy.

  ‘I really need your help. I want you to tell me the truth,’ I said.

  ‘The truth?’ she repeated, as though I had made an outlandish request. ‘I’m sorry, who did you say you were?’

  ‘It’s Louise Kelly, from Edleybury. Rosie, you know who I am.’

  ‘Hold the line please.’

  Her oddly impersonal tone convinced me that there was something wrong with her. Mental illness is said to be infectious, and I wondered whether I had traced the source of my recent disturbance. Perhaps Rosie was the one who was divorced from reality, not me. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me before.

  The voice on the line returned. ‘I’m afraid Rosie isn’t here,’ she said, and I gathered I had been talking to a complete stranger, begging her to help me.

  ‘Oh,
never mind. I’m so sorry to have bothered you and thank you for your time.’

  As I hung up, a wave of clarity swept through me as though I had been shown the answer to my problem. If strangers were not prepared to help me save my marriage, I was going to have to confront Nick himself, and this time there would be no more secrets. If it turned out that he had been having an affair, we would decide together how we wanted to proceed, but our decision would be based on the truth, not on some nebulous speculation.

  I walked back to the house with the sun warming my back. Light fell across a vast swathe of grass, and foliage on surrounding trees shone vibrant in the golden glow of a late afternoon. Whatever transpired, I realised then what I had known all along; I was never going to abandon my marriage.

  Chapter 36

  Nick was busy finishing off a report he was writing for the governors when I arrived home. He read parts of it out to me.

  ‘Do you think the tone is too bullish?’ he asked.

  I felt a bit sorry for Nick, the new boy on the block, who was trying to convince the governors to change the school, and its traditions.

  ‘Change is always hard,’ I said.

  ‘This goes beyond the normal resistance to change. We’re dealing with a load of dead wood here. Oh, they’re solid to the core, the lot of them, and the school’s in safe hands with them. A bit too safe, and that’s the trouble. Individually they’re decent enough, but as a body they’re very resistant to change. And we have to move with the times. Burwood have gone co-ed and it’s been a roaring success.’ He grew animated as he spoke. ‘If we phase the girls in, year by year, five years from now we could be fully co-ed and we’ll have doubled our pool of pupils to select from. With overseas pupils increasingly looking elsewhere, and ever fiercer competition to attract home-grown talent, it’s the only way the school can survive in the long term. But they’re all too stuck in their ways to see it. If I’d suggested turning the school into a zoo, they couldn’t have been more shocked when I first raised the idea with them.’ He gave a mischievous grin. ‘But I’m going to do it, and we’ll turn this place around. It’s the only way forward. If we want to compete, we have to move the school into the twenty-first century. They’ve been bleating about sports facilities, and changing rooms, and boarding houses, saying what I’m proposing is impossible, but it can be done. We’ve already got our sixth form girls, and plans are in place to convert one of the boarding houses. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. Girls won’t tolerate the living conditions boys put up with, I know that much. Burwood had a bit of trouble on that front in the early days.’ He chuckled. ‘But seriously, we can learn from their mistakes and get this right. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel. Listen.’

  He read out a section from his report which focused on figures and forecasts. With the increased pupil population, he argued, a bank loan for extra building work could be paid off within a few years. It sounded a bit optimistic to me, and I told him so, but he assured me he had gone into the matter in detail.

  ‘The chair of the governors is sympathetic to the proposal,’ he added, ‘so I’m sure we can swing it. David’s against it, of course, along with all the rest of the dead wood.’

  There was a contingent of about eight members of staff who had been at the school for several decades, whom Nick had dubbed “the dead wood”, in his conversations with me.

  ‘He may be the deputy head, and old friends with the governors–’

  ‘But you’re the headmaster,’ I completed his sentence.

  ‘Exactly.’ Nick smiled. ‘And the chair of governors supported my appointment for a reason.’

  ‘Are you saying he knew about all this before we came here?’

  ‘We discussed my vision for the school before my appointment, yes. He warned me some of the governors would be difficult to persuade, but only a fool will insist on fighting the tide of progress. And they’re not fools.’

  It sounded rather grandiloquent to describe going co-ed as “the tide of progress”, but I didn’t say so, asking instead, ‘What about persuading the dead wood it’s a good idea?’

  Nick gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Never mind about them. We’re looking at the bigger picture. Most of them won’t be around for much longer. They’ll have retired, or kicked the bucket, before the new scheme is even half done.’

  He would probably have continued talking about his vision for the future but Jen called me, as she had done most evenings since my brush with the police. We chatted for a while, and then I went to see to our supper. Unbelievably, and rather wonderfully, life was returning to normal. Once I had spoken to Nick, and persuaded him to tell me the truth, we would settle back into our former happy relationship. Of course we would have to sit down and have a serious conversation about what had happened, if it turned out that he had indeed been unfaithful, but I had already decided to forgive him, as long as it never happened again.

  ‘It’s been a challenging year for you,’ I planned to say. ‘Sue was a tremendous help to you in running the school, far more than I could possibly have been, and deep gratitude can easily be confused with love.’

  At which point I would pause long enough to allow him to interrupt me to say that he had never loved her, had never loved anyone but me.

  ‘It was just a fling,’ I imagined him protesting, perhaps with tears in his eyes, although he never cried. ‘She meant nothing to me.’

  It felt wicked to imagine a conversation like that about Sue, as though my thoughts were somehow disrespectful to the dead, but Nick was my husband. No other woman had any claim on his affection and, in any case, nothing I said or did could make any difference to Sue now.

  Onions were frying, garlic crushed, and I was chopping tomatoes, when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Can you get it?’ I asked. ‘My hands are wet.’

  ‘Okay.’

  A moment later, Nick called out to me. ‘Lou, it’s the police. They want to talk to you again.’

  He sounded agitated, but I was eager to see the sergeant. Hoping she had made progress with her investigation into the pictures on Rosie’s missing phone, I switched off the gas, wiped my hands, and hurried to the hall where I balked, catching sight of the detective inspector standing on the doorstep. The sergeant stood impassively at his side.

  ‘Hello, Inspector,’ I said, stepping forward slowly. ‘What do you want now?’

  ‘May we come in?’ he asked.

  We seemed to be trapped in a time warp, repeating the same conversation over and over again.

  I hesitated. At the risk of sounding uncooperative, I said, ‘I was just making dinner.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the inspector replied. Deliberately mistaking my meaning he added drily, ‘but I’m afraid we won’t stay.’

  We sat down in the living room and the inspector looked from me to Nick and back again. Nick was frowning, as though he was struggling to understand what was going on.

  ‘What is this about, Inspector?’ he asked.

  ‘Something has happened to Rosie White.’

  The two detectives sat watching me without saying a word.

  Nick broke the uncomfortable silence that followed. ‘What’s this got to do with us?’

  ‘Your wife alleged Rosie White showed her photographs that proved you were having an affair, Mr Kelly.’

  ‘Rosie White?’ I repeated slowly as though trying to remember who she was. ‘Oh yes.’ I turned to Nick. ‘She’s the journalist who interviewed us for the county magazine.’

  I wondered if they knew I had tried to meet her, several times, or that I had broken into her flat.

  ‘What about her?’ Nick asked.

  The detectives looked at one another, and the inspector gave a slight nod.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s dead,’ the sergeant said. Her words fell softly through the air between us. ‘She died three nights ago. Her editor reported her missing when she failed to turn up for work two days in a row and he was unable to reach her.’

  For a
moment I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Oh Jesus, not another one,’ Nick burst out. ‘What the hell happened this time? I take it she was murdered too?’

  The inspector gave him a curious look. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be here otherwise, would you. But, Inspector, my wife and I didn’t know this woman. We barely even met her. It’s decent of you to come here and let us know, but all she did was interview us for an article–’

  The inspector’s expression remained fixed as he turned to Nick with a single word question. ‘Article?’

  ‘In a magazine. That’s how we met her. She came here to interview us for the Hertfordshire Style magazine.’

  ‘She’s dead now,’ the inspector replied curtly.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, struggling to find the right words for the occasion. ‘How did she die?’

  It was the most appropriate response I could think of. And all the time I was casting my mind back, desperately trying to recall whether I might have left any evidence of my presence in the flat. It wasn’t the first time I had seemed to be caught in a horrible invisible trap in my dealings with the police. Once again, my head swam and my sight grew blurred, as though I was looking at the world through water.

  ‘And what has this got to do with us?’ Nick added, almost under his breath.

  ‘She was smothered with a pillow,’ the inspector replied in a chillingly matter-of-fact tone. ‘In her own bed.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I cried out, horrified.

  ‘We wondered whether either of you had been in touch with her or might know anything about who she was seeing,’ the inspector said.

  I hesitated, not knowing how much the sergeant had passed onto her boss. Nick had no such reservations.

  ‘No,’ he replied promptly, ‘we don’t know the woman. I can only surmise that it’s a sad coincidence, her being killed so close on the heels of Sue’s murder. We’d like to know if you’ve made any progress with that. I’ve tried to contact her family to find out whether they’ve made any funeral arrangements, but as far as I can gather, the body still hasn’t been released.’