The Midnight Hour, page 20
Max drove faster, freeing himself from the suburbs of London.
* * *
‘We need to watch the house,’ said Edgar. ‘Seth could well come back. He might not be heading for Somerset after all.’ He wondered if he’d been too hasty in telling Max Seth’s supposed destination. He’d alerted the Somerset police and asked for an officer to visit Massingham Hall. Because where else could Seth be heading? If he knew Max, he’d be on his way there too, speeding across country in his ludicrously expensive car.
‘I’ll send a car to wait outside Tudor Close,’ said Bob. They were in Edgar’s office having what Edgar called a strategy meeting. Bob was looking worried but then he often did when he was in the middle of a case. Edgar thought the word ‘strategy’ made him nervous.
‘Make it an unmarked car,’ said Edgar. ‘We don’t want them to get alarmed.’
He thought of the Billingtons, gathered in that strangely eerie house. Did they really not know why Seth had left? Was Verity covering up for him? Emma had said that Seth seemed to be her favourite son. ‘Well, to be fair, he’s everyone’s favourite,’ she’d said.
Meg was obviously embarrassed that Seth had disappeared on her watch. ‘I thought he’d just gone upstairs,’ she said. ‘David, Sheena and Aaron had got back from the wake. Sheena was fussing about sandwiches and David and Aaron were drinking beer. Verity was showing me pictures of old variety stars. Seth didn’t tell anyone he was going, unless he’d told Verity earlier. I’m so sorry.’ Edgar didn’t blame Meg. There was nothing she could have done to stop Seth leaving, after all, and maybe it was more important that she had developed a rapport with Verity.
‘Let’s send WDC Connolly to Tudor Close in the morning,’ said Edgar. ‘She seems to get on well with Mrs Billington. Verity. We’ll see if she can get any more out of her.’
‘Wilco,’ said Bob. He often used phrases that he thought were RAF slang. Edgar wondered if it came from being in the shadow of his pilot officer brother.
When Bob had left, Edgar made a few phone calls and then prepared to leave for the day. There was nothing much he could do until tomorrow. Bob would let him know if anything happened at Tudor Close and he very much hoped that Max would telephone when he arrived in Somerset. Edgar gathered up his things, nodded at the portrait of Henry Solomon on the wall and left the office. Most of the day staff had left but, when he passed the incident room, he saw that Meg Connolly was still there, writing what looked like a letter.
‘Working late?’ he said.
Meg flushed guiltily but she was the sort of girl who often blushed when spoken to. Despite this, she wasn’t shy exactly.
‘Did DI Willis explain about going to Tudor Close tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We thought you could keep the place under surveillance in case Seth Billington turns up. You’ve done well to establish friendly relations with the family.’
He’d meant to be encouraging but he realised that he had used about twenty words where one or two would have sufficed. Well done or Good work. Whizzo, as Bob’s RAF brother would probably say. Meg looked a bit bemused but it turned out that her mind was on other things.
‘Sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been writing up my notes on the women who were . . . who had affairs with Bert Billington.’
‘Oh yes?’ He remembered Emma showing him the list.
‘I just wondered . . . could you show them to Emma? Mrs Stephens? She’s so good at finding patterns and clues. I thought she might see something I’d missed.’
She was holding out the folded pages. Edgar was torn between thinking it was rather a cheek to use him as a postal service and admiration for Meg’s diligence. He also felt rather proud of his clever wife (cleverer than him, as Verity had pointed out earlier). Meg was right, Emma was brilliant at looking at a tangle of information and finding a way through it. Of course, Meg would have got to know Emma well on their road trip.
‘I’ll show Emma,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said Meg.
Edgar walked back along the coast road. The clocks had gone back the previous weekend and it was pitch dark at six p.m. A full moon was rising over the sea, illuminating the clouds around it. A Gothic sky, thought Edgar. Emma had reminded him that Sunday night was Hallowe’en, All Hallows’ Eve, the day when the dead walk the streets. If you look in a mirror on Hallowe’en night, Emma had said, you’re meant to see the face of the man you were going to marry. Or else you see your own death. Edgar thought that she’d probably got that from Astarte. He wondered whether it was such a good idea, after all, to let Astarte babysit the children.
And it seemed that Astarte had struck again. As soon as he opened the door, Emma was telling him that Alma Saunders had apparently visited Astarte for a reading, claiming to be Verity Malone.
‘Why would she do that?’ said Edgar, taking off his coat.
‘I don’t know,’ said Emma. ‘But it’s interesting, isn’t it? Apparently, Verity, or Alma pretending to be Verity, said she was worried about her oldest son.’
‘David?’ said Edgar, remembering the man who had opened the door at Tudor Close.
‘No,’ said Emma. ‘Frederick. Alma’s oldest son. Astarte said it was his aura she sensed.’
She was smiling, as if inviting him to share the joke, but Edgar knew that she was desperate to discuss the case. Her face was glowing in a way that made Edgar remember the young DS Holmes. He found this touching, but he also wanted to have his supper and forget murder for a while. Marianne and Sophie came racing downstairs full of news about school and what somebody did to somebody else when Miss Hobden wasn’t looking.
‘Sam’s made this amazing railway track,’ said Sophie. ‘Come and see.’ She dragged him into the sitting room where the trains now ran under the sofa, through the nest of tables and ended in a terminus by the television set. Even Jonathan seemed entranced by it, although Edgar noticed that he was chewing one of the signalmen. Should he stop him? Was that lead paint?
‘Was Sam here?’ he said, stooping down to look at the locomotives. He couldn’t resist sending one on its way.
‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘She wanted to talk about the case.’ There was a definite edge to her voice now.
‘Can we talk about it later?’ said Edgar. ‘When the children are in bed?’
‘It’s that pas devant thing again,’ said Marianne to Sophie. ‘I think it’s very rude.’
‘Ruby said we’d probably like a good murder,’ said Sophie.
This didn’t surprise Edgar at all. He turned to Emma, hoping to share the joke, but she was still watching the train circling the track.
* * *
Max made good time through Aldershot and Winchester and then he was driving over Salisbury Plain. There was darkness on either side of him, although occasionally he saw faint wavery lights on the horizon. Stonehenge was out there somewhere, monolithic and solemn, unaffected by his petty problems. He’d taken Lydia and the children to see it last year. Rocco and Elena had played hide-and-seek through the stones, pretending to be Heidi and Peter. He’d tried to tell them about the Stone Age and the people who had transported the stones so many miles to this deserted spot, but he was hampered by their lack of interest and his own lack of knowledge. Lydia had said the place was dreary and could do with a few shops.
Max hurtled on through the Neolithic landscape.
* * *
Meg was lucky enough to catch the 1A bus just as it was leaving the Old Steine. That meant she wouldn’t have to walk up Wilson Avenue, which always seemed longer in the dark. She leant her head against the window, watching the people scurrying across the road, heads down against the wind. When you’re walking, the lights of a bus seem the epitome of good cheer but, looking out, Meg found herself thinking wistfully about the people going past and those living behind the windows of the smart houses on Marine Parade. Occasionally she saw a chandelier or a draped curtain. She liked it at Christmas when lots of the flats had decorations that could be seen from the road. Only another two months until Christmas.
Meg’s forehead bumped against the glass. She thought of the funeral that morning, of Leonard Holt saying, ‘Lots of show-business folk buried in this graveyard.’ She thought of Barbara Dodson dying alone in Hastings and of Aleister Crowley who had cursed the town. She thought of the Gillespies and the picture over their TV, the smiling blonde woman and her angelic baby. She thought of Whitby and the ruined abbey and the cloaked figure staring up at her. There was something about this case, she thought, that went beyond the usual domestic tragedy, wives killing husbands, husbands killing wives. This was about retribution, she was sure of it. She thought of the Dl’s strange quotation. Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth. The words of a song came into her head, a song that had been in the charts that summer. She couldn’t remember much of it, just the chorus about waiting until the midnight hour. The lyrics were meant to be somewhat risqué—some radio stations had refused to play the track—but now the phrase came back to Meg with another meaning. Bert could escape his crimes for years but there would come an hour, the midnight hour, when he would have to pay.
* * *
Edgar offered to read to the girls. Usually he was the favoured reader because he did different voices for all the characters but tonight he kept getting the dwarves’ names wrong and was prompted by Marianne, at first with a laugh and then with an exaggerated sigh. He left them locked up in the Elf King’s dungeons and went downstairs to find Emma reading Meg’s notes at the kitchen table.
‘Tea?’ he said. He knew that she was still annoyed about his refusal to discuss the case earlier.
‘I’d rather have a glass of wine,’ said Emma. ‘Have we got any?’
‘I think we’ve got a bottle of red somewhere.’ He found it in the cupboard, pulled the cork and poured them both a glass. He sat opposite Emma at the table and prepared himself to make an effort.
‘Anything interesting from Meg?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Emma. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about work.’
She put a slight emphasis on the last word. Was she implying that to her it wasn’t just work? wondered Edgar.
‘I was thinking today,’ said Edgar, ‘how good you were at sifting through evidence and finding things that the rest of us have missed, finding a pattern.’
‘Are you trying to get round me?’ said Emma.
‘Yes,’ said Edgar.
Emma made a dismissive noise but she took a sip of wine and, after a few seconds, said, ‘Meg’s very good. Very thorough. I hope Bob appreciates her.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ said Edgar. But he thought of O’Neill whispering to Barker and resolved to make sure that Meg was looked after.
‘I’ve been thinking about the Billington brothers,’ said Emma. ‘I think we should look at David. He might have wanted to get his father out of the way so that he had complete control of the business. It can’t have been easy, having Bert breathing down his neck. To say nothing of having to pay off all of Bert’s mistresses.’
‘What about Alma Saunders?’
‘Maybe she knew something. Sheena said that she knew all the family secrets. It’s in Meg’s notes.’
‘But it was Seth that was seen leaving the house.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Emma. She fixed him with one of her uncomfortably direct looks. ‘The brothers look very alike.’
And Edgar thought of David opening the door at Tudor Close and how, for a few minutes, he hadn’t been sure which brother he was facing.
* * *
Max shot through Yeovil—luckily the streets were empty—then he was on the narrow country roads. The wind had picked up and the trees creaked ominously overhead. Occasionally he saw a full moon riding across the sky. The hag is astride, this night for to ride. Lydia might think that Hallowe’en was a charming family holiday but Max tended towards the darker version. The graves stood tenant-less and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. His car headlights illuminated hedgerows, cottages, a signpost like a white hand at a crossroads. He was nearly there now. He had walked these lanes as a boy, ridden them on his pony, spluttered past in his first car, desperate to escape. And there was the sign. Massingham Hall. Max took the corner almost on two wheels and then had to make an emergency stop. A police car was parked by the gates.
Max got out. ‘What’s going on?’ He winced at how like his father he sounded, every inch the outraged landowner.
Two policemen got out of the car. One of them had a torch and it reflected his white face and peaked cap. He touched the brim now and said, ‘Lord Massingham?’ Just for a second, Max thought that the policeman too was thinking of his father. Then he remembered that this strange supporting character was now him.
‘We had a call from the Brighton police, sir,’ said the officer. ‘They asked us to check that everything was all right at the hall. We’ve just called in and Lady Massingham assured us that all was well. We’ll just keep watch for a little bit longer if it’s all the same to you, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said Max. ‘Very good. Thank you.’
He was breathing a little easier when he got back in his car but, all the same, he wanted to see for himself that all was well. He could see the lights of the house as he drove nearer and that, too, reassured him. He was about to park by the front steps when something told him to drive round to the stable block where the garages now were.
And he was just in time to see a green Aston Martin driving away.
Twenty-Eight
Max was used to disappearing acts. They had, once, been his speciality. The vanishing box, the phantom, the empty cabinet. The girl on the table, the drapes thrown over her—casually concealing the hidden trapdoor—the reveal, the double-take, the gasps from the stalls. But this version, he reflected as he walked towards the house, had been imperfectly performed. Ideally, he should not have seen the car or, better still, Seth should have remained in the house, pretending that he was there to see Max. It was the escape that proved his guilt. The question was, how would Lydia play her part? As Max often said: in vanishing tricks, everything depends on the girl.
As he climbed the stairs to the front door, Max saw the pumpkins on each step, each one glowing with an inner light. ‘If a house is decorated with a lighted pumpkin,’ Lydia had said, ‘it means the kids can call in. It’s a sort of signal.’ Had these been a signal to her lover? A sign that the coast was clear?
Max could hear Panda barking inside the house. He felt irrationally irritated with the dog. Caesar would have defended his house better. He betted that Panda had fawned all over Seth and now the stupid animal was barking at his master.
Lydia was waiting for him in the hall. Max noticed immediately that she was casually, but carefully, dressed in slacks and a cashmere jumper. She was wearing make-up too, but subtly applied so as to look as if she wasn’t. Panda came frisking up to Max but even he looked rather embarrassed.
‘Max,’ said Lydia. ‘This is a nice surprise. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.’
She was a good actress but her eyes were wary. Max didn’t think he could stand much more of this. ‘I saw Seth’s car,’ he said.
‘Oh yes,’ said Lydia. ‘He was in the area and he popped in, hoping to see you.’
Max looked at her. Just wait, that’s what the old pros always said, count to ten before you say the line. That way you can be sure that the audience is listening.
‘Seth was in Brighton at three o’clock this afternoon,’ he said at last. ‘I wonder what brought him here in such a hurry?’
Lydia shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask him.’
‘So he drove for four hours just on the off-chance of seeing me?’ said Max. ‘I never knew he was such a devoted friend. Strange, though, having made such an effort, that he should drive away just as I arrive.’
Now it was Lydia’s turn to stay silent.
‘How long have you been having an affair with Seth?’ asked Max, in a conversational tone.
Even so, Lydia backed away. ‘I’m not—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Max. ‘Don’t lie about it.’ Panda, alarmed by his raised voice, started to whine. Max reached down to pat him. ‘It’s OK, boy.’
He straightened up to face Lydia, keeping his tone conversational. ‘If the police hadn’t come round, I would probably have caught you in bed together, wouldn’t I? Like some French farce.’ He suddenly thought of something. ‘Where are the children?’
‘In the playroom,’ said Lydia. ‘Watching a cinefilm with Nanny.’
‘Jesus,’ said Max. ‘You thought of everything.’
Lydia raised her chin. ‘Not quite everything. I didn’t think you’d be here. I suppose your policeman friend tipped you off.’
‘Sorry to inconvenience you,’ said Max. ‘How long have you been sleeping with Seth?’
‘It’s not what you think,’ said Lydia. ‘We’re in love.’
‘You know he could be my son. Was that part of the attraction?’
‘He asked his mother,’ said Lydia, ‘and she says you’re not his father. It was Bert Billington. The one who was murdered.’
‘You know the police think that Seth murdered him?’
‘That’s not true!’ Lydia fired up immediately. Maybe she did love Seth. ‘He was in Whitby when his father died and with me in Brighton when that woman was killed, the cleaner.’
Didn’t Edgar say that Seth had been seen leaving the victim’s house? But Max couldn’t think about that now. He looked at Lydia. Her face was pale and her eyes wide with trepidation. Max thought that she’d never looked more beautiful. Suddenly he felt old and tired.
‘I’m going to see the children,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll sleep in the spare room.’
‘Max,’ said Lydia. ‘We have to talk.’
