‘Right.’
For a second the outside world was illuminated by a flash of lightning. The thunder now followed hard on its heels.
‘Do you mind if I ask if you’re Catholic, Sheila?’ Carole didn’t like the woman; she didn’t mind if she sounded nosy.
‘No.’
‘Then why . . .?’
‘Why have I devoted my life to this place?’ Sheila Cartwright’s dark blue eyes suddenly focused on the pale blue of Carole’s.
‘All right. Why?’
The rain fell as though an overhead sluice had suddenly been opened. The two women looked at the spatters of water bouncing up from the ground outside.
When she spoke, Sheila’s voice was barely audible above the roaring of the weather. ‘The reason I’m obsessed with Bracketts is very simple. Comes down to one poem. Esmond’s most famous poem. I’m sure you know it.’
‘ “Threnody for the Lost” . . .?’
The tall woman’s head nodded once. ‘Nearly twenty years ago, I was all right. Happily married, one teenage son. Nick. My husband had a good job, I didn’t need to work. Just spent the time ministering to my menfolk. Cooking dinner parties for my husband’s friends, ferrying Nick from pillar to post. Squash court to rugby club to hockey pitch to Yacht Club . . .’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Nick was drowned in a sailing accident. He was fourteen. His body was never found.’
‘Like Graham Chadleigh’s?’ asked Carole softly.
Another single nod. ‘I was devastated. We were both devastated, my husband more than me. He’s never really recovered. He’d invested so much hope in Nick, in Nick becoming a sportsman, in Nick achieving things he’d never achieved himself. It was a bad time.’
Only the persistent drumming of the rain filled the silence.
‘I tried everything,’ Sheila went on, ‘that might bring me comfort. Religion . . . therapy . . . antidepressants . . . Nothing worked. The pain just got worse. And then, for the first time, on the recommendation of a friend, I read “Threnody for the Lost”. At last I’d found something that spoke to me, somebody who had shared and empathized with my pain. So I started to read more of Esmond Chadleigh’s work, to read about his life. I discovered that this house was no longer in the family and falling into disrepair and –’ the shrug of her shoulders seemed to encompass everything ‘– that’s how an obsession was born.’
‘And your husband? Was he involved too?’
A brisker shrug. ‘No, I said he went to pieces.’ Like the way she hadn’t graced him with a name, this dismissal confirmed her husband’s irrelevance in her life.
‘You mean he’s hospitalized?’
‘No, no, he’s at home. But he’s had nothing to do with Bracketts.’
That seemed to be all she had to say on the subject of her husband. And the brief moment of vulnerability brought on by the mention of her son had passed too. Sheila Cartwright moved briskly to the doorway and looked out at the sheeting rain.
‘It’s not going to let up. We’d better make a dash for it.’
‘You’ll get soaked through,’ said Carole dubiously, feeling slightly smug for having brought her Burberry with her from the Renault.
‘I’ll borrow one of these.’ Sheila took down a ‘Brack-etts Volunteer’ waterproof from the pegs by the door. ‘We’ve got plenty of them.’
‘Some sponsorship deal, was it?’
‘Yes. Very promising one. Didn’t last, though. Company got taken over by one of the insurance big boys, and the new owners weren’t interested in sponsorship at this level. Wanted to entertain their corporate clients at golf tournaments, not writers’ houses,’ she concluded bitterly.
‘Still, the coats are good,’ said Carole.
‘Oh yes, got something out of it,’ Sheila agreed, zipping up the front and pulling the hood over her head.
‘Shouldn’t we lock up?’ asked Carole.
‘Oh no,’ said Sheila Cartwright. ‘Gina’s the Director. That’s her job.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
As they walked towards the car park, the rain pounded down. Carole envied Sheila’s hood, and wished she’d brought an umbrella or some kind of hat, as her hair was flattened down against her head. The rain splashed up so much on hitting the ground that Carole’s tights and shoes were instantly drenched.
‘A good example of the Pathetic Fallacy,’ Sheila shouted over the din.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘When inanimate objects reflect people’s emotions. Literary device Esmond used to use quite a lot. Him and the Romantic Poets. So you have this rain and wind echoing the storminess of the Emergency Trustees’ Meeting.’
‘You were the one who made it stormy,’ Carole couldn’t help saying.
‘Unavoidable, I’m afraid. Where the survival of Bracketts is concerned, any means are acceptable.’
The moment of sympathy Carole had felt when Sheila talked about her dead son was once again replaced by irritation. The woman was nothing less than a bully; all she cared about was getting her own way.
Suddenly the path around them was flooded with light. Long slanting lines of rain became solid in the beam. Carole looked up for the flash in the sky, but the light continued.
‘Security lamps,’ Sheila explained. ‘Triggered by anyone walking towards the car park.’ Then her attention was distracted. ‘What the hell . . .?’
Carole followed her eyeline. They were walking along the wall of the kitchen garden, whose gates, locked since the day of the skeleton’s discovery, now hung open on their hinges.
‘What’s been going on?’ asked Sheila angrily, as she stepped forward into the the space designated for the Bracketts Museum.
Carole saw no lightning flash, but there was a sharp crack of what she took to be thunder. In front of her Sheila Cartwright shuddered and stood rigid for a moment. Then slowly, she toppled forward, face-down, on to the ground.
Carole Seddon moved quickly towards her. From the tall body on the ground came a guttural gurgling.
The white beam of the security lamp caught on the ridges of brown mud by the woman’s head.
And also on the red blood that was spilling from her hidden face.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Carole ran to the Administrative Office to summon the police. It was empty, no sign of Gina. The motherly voice on the other end of the line asked her if she was sure the woman in the kitchen garden was dead. Instinctively, Carole said yes. She was told not to touch anything, but wait until someone arrived. It shouldn’t be more than ten minutes. There was a patrol car in the Fedborough area; wouldn’t take long to get to South Stapley. Bracketts, the big house, right. Near the car park, fine. If Mrs Seddon wouldn’t mind waiting by the entrance . . . assuming of course that the weather wasn’t too bad.
In fact the rain had stopped, as suddenly extinguished as the life of Sheila Cartwright. When Carole returned, the body was completely still, and the pool of blood seemed to have stopped increasing.
The beam of the security lights now showed another gleam of blood, on the dark wetness of Sheila’s ‘Bracketts Volunteer’ waterproof, right between her shoulder blades. Only very little had spilled through the small hole in the fabric; presumably a lot more had spread inside, between the coat and her punctured flesh.
It must have been a bullet. Nothing else could have made such a mark and had such an effect. Carole tried to remember exactly where Sheila had been standing when she had been hit, and from what direction the shot had been fired. Definitely not from the car park. The bullet had come from the cluster of buildings, Bracketts itself, the converted stable block which housed the Administrative Office, and Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ cottage. Or maybe the killer had been standing in the open somewhere between them. There was still no sign of anyone, apart from Carole and Sheila’s body.