The woman with all the dogs at Mulberry Cottage stood outside. She was wearing an extraordinary outfit and her wildly snagged hair was full of pollen and leaves and seeds and even a couple of blackberries.
It took Valentine a moment to collect his wits and a moment more to grasp what she was saying. It was some garbled tale about a motor car that would not reverse, yet another injured dog and someone called Piers who needed to be let out on the stroke of twelve if he was to maintain his natural position as team leader.
Valentine went to get his jacket. Whatever the drama actually involved, sorting it out would help pass the time until evening - when dusk would fall and he could once more present himself at the blue painted door.
Being invited to the Old Rectory for coffee, though not a rare occurrence, did not happen all that often. When Ann had rung up yesterday evening and suggested it, Louise had said yes straightaway although she had planned that morning to drive to the library at Causton. She could do so later in the day and was unhappy to find herself seeing this as ‘filling the afternoon up’. Needing to kill time was an unpleasant novelty. When working she had frequently prayed for a forty-eight-hour day.
She spent the time before leaving attempting to assess her relationship with Ann Lawrence honestly. Almost testing it for strength. As terms of friendship went, she hadn’t really known Ann very long. Their mutual confidences were not what some women might call intimate. But Louise had experienced a genuine degree of warmth in these exchanges and also felt that Ann would prove to be both discreet and loyal.
The fact of the matter was that she was longing to share with someone sympathetic her worries about Valentine. There were other friends she could have talked to, but none nearby and no one who had actually stood face to face with the individual at the heart of the matter. She knew Ann loathed Jax, although this had never been put into words, and also suspected she was afraid of him.
For a while, sleepless in the middle of the night, Louise toyed with the idea of ringing the Samaritans. The service was confidential and perhaps it would be easier to talk to a kindly, anonymous listener, especially by telephone.
But Louise had no sooner started to dial than she had second thoughts. What could she say? My brother is homosexual and is seeing a man I believe to be dangerously violent. What would they say? Are you quite sure about that? No. How well do you know this man? Not at all. What age is your brother? Forty-three. Have you tried to talk to him about this? Once. It caused such a rift in our relationship I swore I’d never try again. Do you think he might be persuaded to talk to us himself? Under no circumstances.
End of story.
Now she checked the clock. Almost eleven. Louise got ready to leave in a half-hearted way, not bothering with make-up, just pinning her hair loosely on top of her head. She put on a loose-fitting, long-sleeved apricot linen dress and some dark glasses. The day was not really sunny enough to merit them but lack of sleep had left bruised-looking smudges beneath her eyes.
When no one appeared at the front of the Old Rectory, Louise made her way round the side of the house, relieved to see the garage door wide open and the car missing.
The back entrance was reached through a conservatory. Very large and very old, it held garden paraphernalia. Wellingtons, old jackets, a couple of straw hats and dozens of flowering plants. A well-established Hamburg vine as thick and tough as a man’s arm and planted directly in the earth twined, pale and splintery, across the roof. The whole place had a rich earthy fragrance that was very pleasant. Louise lingered a moment, taking pleasure in the dense almost oppressive silence broken only by the hiss and trickle of a garden hose.
She pushed open the back door and called, ‘Hello?’ There was no reply. Louise wondered if Ann had simply forgotten her invitation and gone out, leaving the door unlocked. She often did this, to Louise’s city-bred incredulity.
But although Ann proved to be in the kitchen, it was plain she had indeed forgotten the invitation. When Louise put her head round the door, Ann stared blankly across the room as if at a complete stranger - only for a fraction of a second but long enough for Louise to recognise that this was not going to be the person to whom she could unburden her heart. Driven by need, she must have been fantasising earlier, investing what she saw now was merely a pleasantly amiable acquaintance with qualities it did not have. Louise, even while recognising how unfair this was to Ann, was surprised by how disappointed she felt.
‘Louise! Oh, I’m sorry. I quite - Oh dear ...’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it does. Please, sit down.’
Ann, surely more distressed, it seemed to Louise, than the occasion warranted, started to hurry about, collecting the cafetière, washing out the grounds, finding some deep yellow breakfast cups. And all with a flurried unhappy air of determination that seemed further to demonstrate just how unwelcome the interruption actually was.
‘Look,’ said Louise, who had not sat down, ‘we can do this another time.’
‘No, no. You must stay.’
‘Could we just have tea then?’ She pulled out a ladder-back chair. ‘A bag in a mug would be fine.’
Ann immediately abandoned the coffee-making preparations and switched on the electric kettle which straightaway switched itself off. She stared at Louise. ‘I don’t know. This morning everything seems ...’ The rest of the sentence was lost to her.
‘Let me.’ Louise got up and filled the kettle. The sink was full of dirty dishes. She looked around for tea bags and made the drinks while at the same time keeping an eye on Ann, now sitting at the table, pale-faced and trembling slightly from head to foot.
Louise took the tea over, sat down and took Ann’s hand. It was dry and cold. They sat silently for quite a long time. Comfortable at first, Louise eventually began to feel awkward in the continuing silence.
‘What is it, Ann? Are you ill?’
‘No.’
‘You’re shaking.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Ann began to contradict herself. ‘I think it’s the flu. A cold. Something like that.’
Whatever it was, it was nothing like that. Louise wondered if there had been some sad family news. A death, maybe. But then remembered that Ann had no close living relatives. Or friends, except in the village. Could it be a delayed reaction to Charlie Leathers’ murder? It seemed unlikely. Like everyone else, she had not liked the man.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ She released the hand.
Ann lifted her head and looked at Louise. Then stared vacantly at the mugs of tea, the stale toast crumbs, the branches of purple berberis in a jug. Did she want to talk about it? God, yes. Sometimes she wanted to talk about it so desperately she feared she would not be able to control herself. That she would be driven, like the poor wandering rejects from mental hospitals, to seize a total stranger in the street and force on him her dreadful secret.
But could she trust Louise? How well did she really know her? Ann thought she would probably be safer with the passerby. They would simply assume she was mad and that would be an end to it.
What had happened was this. Earlier that morning, just before ten thirty to be precise, Ann found a second letter lying in the little cage behind the front door. Strangely, considering she was still reeling from the shock of receiving the first, she did not immediately recognise it for what it was.
The post proper had been delivered half an hour earlier and had proved as boringly innocuous as ever. Most of it was junk and Ann threw it into the bin. Lionel, running around gathering his wits and his papers in readiness for a working lunch with the Caritas Trust Committee, pushed what was left into his briefcase.