A rogue male. Was he dangerous? Was he likely to turn nasty? Well, yes. If he saw that she suspected – nay, knew what he had done. He would have brought a hammer with him. All he needed to do was raise the hammer in his ham-like hand and bring it down on her head. Would he dare? The odd thing was that she didn’t feel in the least afraid. She had been brought to Twiston by a twist of fate, by a strange concatenation of chance and circumstance. She was on the track of a child-killer. She didn’t feel anxious, excited or thrilled either. This, Antonia thought, is something I’ve got to do. This is journey’s end. The denouement. No – the final action-filled sequence before the denouement. The chapter she would call ‘Rogue Male’. The denouement of course was going to take place in the library at Twiston -
She shook her head. She was mixing fact and fiction again! She was overheated, probably dangerously so.
She imagined her face taking on the characteristics of a hunting creature: brows drawn together, lips pursed tight, nostrils dilating as those of a dog on the scent… Shouldn’t she have called the police and informed them of her findings? It was only now that the thought occurred to her and she frowned. Well, yes – this was a matter for the police. Only, she felt sure, they wouldn’t take any of it seriously. They would consider her unhinged – the dehydrated victim of sunstroke. Or – or they might think it was a publicity stunt, that she was doing it to increase the sales of her one detective novel.
What was that, madam? A sadistic Major? A doll-like child immured inside the hollow of a Jacobean oak? A signet ring embedded in the cement? Revelations brought about by Gardeners’ Question Time? Even if they had been prepared to listen to her story, even if they gave her the benefit of the doubt and accepted that there might be something in it, they wouldn’t have rushed to Twiston in hot pursuit of Major Nagle. By the time they did decide to interview Nagle, it would be too late. He would have been able to remove the body and his ring several times over.
Though would he? The whole idea seemed fantastic.
How she needed Hugh’s advice! If only he had been with her now.
She had come upon the old-fashioned garden thermometer that marked the highest and lowest temperatures of the day. It was attached to the wall of an octagonal structure with small round windows whose panes were of butter-scotch yellow and a pointed chocolate-coloured roof ending in what looked like a giant humbug, situated under a birch tree. She remembered both, the thermometer and the building, very well indeed. The thermometer, she discovered, stood at eighty-four and a half.
The building had held her entranced when she had first laid eyes on it. It was at once whimsical and vaguely menacing. It had something of the fairy-tale about it (shades of Hansel and Gretel?), though it had been a mere game larder in Edwardian times, placed under the birch tree for coolness’ sake, and by the time she had first seen it, no longer in use. As far as she could recall, it was only Sir Michael who had come to it to examine the thermometer. Sir Michael had considered converting the larder to a storage place of some kind, she couldn’t think exactly for what. As a matter of fact she had observed him carry an ancient lacquered toy-box through the garden and place it inside the larder. It had been – why, it was the day of her departure from Twiston! The day after the tragedy…
Her eye fell on an object on the ground. Something that had gleamed in the sun. She picked it up. A metal button, from a man’s blazer. Her heart missed a beat. Could Major Nagle be taking cover inside the game larder? The place was large enough – just about. No – the button was quite old, she could see now. It had been on the ground for some time, years maybe. Major Nagle was wearing a hacking jacket which had a completely different set of buttons. Besides, the door was padlocked and rusty and overgrown with some white flowering creeper that seemed quite undisturbed. What was it called? Polygonum…? One of the experts on the Gardeners’ Question Time panel would know. The plant, she imagined, was of the kind that grew quickly, smotheringly, and was a menace to anything else that wanted to grow.
Suddenly Antonia had a strange feeling, she couldn’t quite explain, and she stood frowning at the small white flowers that covered the larder door. Like a shrine, she thought. She tried to peer inside through one of the small yellow-panelled windows, but could see nothing. Sir Michael had had a nervous breakdown in the wake of Sonya’s disappearance and died soon after. That toy-box – like a child’s coffin. What if… No. No.
The heat.
Where was the oak? Antonia stood looking round. Was it to the left or the right? Well, directions didn’t really matter – the tree was so big, it could easily be seen from anywhere in the garden. Only now she couldn’t see it. Not at all. How peculiar… She started walking again, followed the path to the left. There was the statue of Pan covered in green moss and the disused pond filled with murky rain water. There was the rustic seat too, where Sir Michael had liked to sit. But the seat used to be under the oak! She saw the oak in her mind’s eye: dark and lifeless and melancholy, with brittle sharp branches, like a skeletal hand reaching into the sky. The oak should be – out there.
But it wasn’t. Not any longer. Taking a few steps, Antonia stood blinking. She gasped as her eyes fell on the stump. It resembled the crater of a mini volcano. The oak was gone. It had been cut – removed – disposed of. The area had been carefully cleaned. There was not a single branch or bough littering the ground. How was that possible? When did it happen? Hadn’t Mrs Ralston-Scott been talking about the oak only three hours ago – she had sought advice on national radio. To cut or not to cut, she had said.
Then Antonia saw what had happened. The programme had been a repeat. The radio recording must have been made the week before. Mrs Ralston-Scott hadn’t wasted time. She had called the tree surgeon soon after her appearance on Gardeners’ Question Time, probably the very next day, and requested the removal of the offensive oak. Enough, she must have thought, was enough.
Antonia knelt beside the dun-coloured stump. The tree, she could see now, had been entirely hollow inside. The cement base was still there, but it had been broken up, smashed into several pieces. She ran her hand across one – burrowed her fingers in the cracks. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. Not a single trace of a small skeleton. No child had ever been immured in the hollow. That, she realized, had been her wild imagination at work again. Of all the preposterous propositions!
She felt the blood rushing into her face. She bit her lip. She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. Watch out for the ring, Miss Pettigrew had whispered in her ear, but Miss Pettigrew had proved a bad counsellor.
Never trust an imaginary friend, Antonia thought as she rose to her feet.
24
The Hour of the Wolf
But then who was that man – the man she had observed in the club library – and what had it all meant? An expression of shock had been on his brick-red face all right. She didn’t think she had been wrong about that. He had been listening to the radio, to Gardeners’ Question Time, to Mrs Ralston-Scott’s voice talking about the proposed sawing down of the ancient oak… Though had he?
Antonia sat down on the rustic seat, shut her eyes and replayed in her mind the scene she had observed, slowly, very carefully. The man had been reading the paper and she had seen him drop it as though in sudden agitation. It had been a racing paper. She had assumed that he had received a shock because of something he had heard on the radio, but what if it was something he had read in the racing paper that had caused him to look as though he were going to have a heart attack? The racing results… Yes. He was a betting man. A lethal gambler. He had put a lot of money on the wrong horse and lost. That would account for it. He had lost a fortune, that’s why he had looked staggered – so terribly upset. Her imagination had done the rest.