A Passion So Deadly

Twelve

When the second Tuesday in December arrived, Constance Lange again showed no particular inclination to make her usual visit to her aunt.

Freddie didn’t like it. Constance’s mood changes were really disturbing him. Briefly she had seemed almost to have returned to her old self until the last few days when he had become worried about her all over again.

He studied her over breakfast. She seemed nervy, distracted and forgetful, and she didn’t look well — although she still continued to insist that she was perfectly fit.

‘Look, if you’re not ill, why are you pulling out of your Bristol trip again?’

Freddie supposed he should be getting used by now to the disruption of routine all around him, it had been going on for two months now, but it still made him uneasy, as did the way in which the wife upon whom he so depended continued to behave in a disturbingly out-of-character fashion.

‘Have a really good lunch, do some Christmas shopping, buy yourself something nice, it’ll cheer you up,’ Freddie continued in spite of getting no response at all from his wife. ‘I don’t like it when you are out of sorts.’

Eventually Constance managed the wan smile which seemed to be the best she could come up with nowadays.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, although in a voice more resigned than apologetic. ‘I expect you’re right, of course I’ll go.’

And so she dressed in one of her smartest suits and set off for Bristol, but there was an air of resignation about her, as if she had merely given in to her husband’s wishes because she did not have the energy to do anything other. Certainly there was no sign of the energetic cheeriness which had always been so much a part of her.

Constance had been gone only a couple of hours when the phone rang at Chalmpton Village Farm. Freddie, in the milking shed with his dairy man, reacted quickly when he heard the loud ring of the amplified bell in the yard. Whenever the phone rang when Constance was not at home, Freddie’s first thought was always that it might be his wife calling. Now, with the more or less permanent anxiety he was feeling about her, he immediately thought that she must need him, that she might be in some kind of trouble.

He dashed into the dairy to pick up the extension there. It was not Constance, but there was an emergency. The headmistress of Portland School, where their youngest daughter, Helen, was a boarder, was on the line. Helen Lange had been suddenly taken very ill and it was feared that she had meningitis. Her condition could be critical. A doctor and an ambulance were already at the school and Helen was about to be taken to the Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton.

Freddie felt his knees turn to jelly. Although both Langes were careful to treat all their children equally, if Constance had always had a soft spot for William — until recently anyway — then Helen was Freddie’s favourite.

Without giving his dairyman any explanation — he did not really trust himself with the words — Freddie hurried into the house, trying not to panic. At least he knew exactly what he had to do next. He used the kitchen phone to call his wife’s mobile and waited impatiently for her to answer. Why was she taking so long? If she were in a bad reception area the phone wouldn’t even be ringing. Oh, come on, Constance.

Then, in a moment of horrified clarity, Freddie realised that the ringing sound he could hear was something other than the ringing tone through the earpiece of the kitchen phone. He could actually hear Constance’s mobile ringing somewhere in the house. Unable to contain his panic now, he began to run from room to room, ultimately discovering that Constance had left her mobile plugged into the charger in the farm office. Somehow, even in the stress of the moment, the earlier incident when she had told him that she had broken down on the motorway and been unable to phone because of flat batteries, flashed across his mind. Now she had left her phone behind. None of this was like Constance. And Helen was critically ill. Freddie felt as if everything were falling apart at once.

He forced himself to concentrate. He must go to the hospital at once — and the Musgrove, thankfully only two or three miles from his daughter’s school, was a good thirty minutes drive from Chalmpton Peverill. But first he had to find Constance.

He needed her so badly, and so did their daughter, he could be sure of that. Constance had always been a wonderful mother. If anything happened to Helen without her being there she would never forgive herself.

Freddie struggled to clear his thoughts. All he could think of doing was to try to contact the nursing home where Constance was due to visit Aunt Ada as usual — but he could not even remember the name of the place. He had an idea that it was something or other Court. Damn! He wished fervently that he had taken more notice of what Constance had told him about Aunt Ada. He had only ever listened with half an ear to her reports of her visits. Then, in a flash of inspiration, he thought of the photograph of Aunt Ada which Constance kept on the hall table. It had been taken soon after the old lady had moved into the home five or six years previously.

Freddie rushed out into the hall. Yes, he had been right. Aunt Ada had been photographed in the garden of the home and its name was just visible on a board in one corner of the photo. However, peering desperately, straining his eyes, Freddie still could not quite read it. Hastily he dashed back into the office, found a magnifying glass and had another go.

This time he could just decipher the words on the sign, Firlands Residential Retirement Home. Strange, he didn’t think that was the name Constance had mentioned at all. It just didn’t seem familiar. Hastily he double-checked the photograph. He had made no mistake. He returned to the kitchen phone and dialled directory enquiries.

For once the system worked efficiently and Freddie was quickly given the number he sought.

‘I wonder if my wife, Mrs Constance Lange, has arrived to visit her aunt yet, I need to get in touch with her urgently,’ he told the female voice which cheerfully greeted him when he called Firlands Retirement Home.

Freddie did not really think Constance would be there yet, but he wanted to be absolutely sure she would be given a message as soon as she did arrive.

The response from the woman at the other end of the line was uncertain, confused even. Freddie did not have the time or patience for stupidity. His daughter was seriously ill. Impatiently he gave Constance’s name for a second time, and repeated three times the name of her aunt.

‘For goodness sake, woman, she’s been with you for more than five years, surely you know who she is,’ he snapped eventually, anxiety making him uncharacteristically brusque.

There was a pause, followed by a request that he hold on for a few seconds, during which Freddie could hear the murmurings of a muffled conversation. Finally a second, more authoritative, voice came on the line.

‘Mr Lange, there must be some misunderstanding. I am afraid your wife’s aunt died over three years ago...’

Freddie put the phone down very carefully. He could feel the remaining strength ebb from his body.

Freddie was sitting in the dark when Constance returned. The grandfather clock in the sitting-room had just struck ten times. This was her usual time. The sound of the car pulling to a halt in the yard, her footsteps on the gravel outside the kitchen door, the familiar creak as the door swung open — all this was the stuff of normality. This was how it had been so many times before. Yet this day, this night, was like no other in Freddie Lange’s life. There was nothing normal about it. And he knew with devastating clarity that the last vestiges of normality had gone for ever out of his world.

The security light outside had come on as Constance drove into the yard. She stood, with the door still open, surprised perhaps by the darkness within, silhouetted in the blazing brightness from without. He was glad that he could not see her face.

‘How was Aunt Ada?’ he asked.

He had tried to make his voice sound the way it always did, but did not think he had succeeded very ably. His wife answered as if all was well, as if this were a perfectly ordinary enquiry on a perfectly ordinary day.

‘Oh you know, much the same. Sends her love.’

She didn’t ask why he was sitting in the dark. Maybe some dreadful premonition stopped her. Instead she reached out for the light switch with one hand while closing the kitchen door with the other.

The kitchen was lit by fluorescent strips, their light harsh and unforgiving. Freddie heard Constance give a small gasp as the harsh glare illuminated the room. He had been crying, for hours, it seemed. Helen was all right, thank God. Tests at the Musgrove had quickly ascertained that she did not have meningitis but a viral infection which gave rise to frighteningly similar symptoms. It would clear up in a couple of days with the help of a course of penicillin. Nonetheless since Freddie had got back from the hospital all he had done was weep. He could only imagine the sight he must be, sitting there at the kitchen table, red-eyed, puffy-faced.

Still Constance did not ask if anything was wrong. Instead she sat down on the chair opposite him, almost falling into it, as if her legs were no longer able to carry her. She looked shocked already. Freddie was glad of that.

‘Your daughter might have died today,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way.

‘What?’ Constance barked the word. It came out hoarsely, like the cry of a fox at night.

‘It’s all right. She’s going to be OK. No thanks to you though.’

His voice was hard, cruel, he knew. It sounded distant and strange, even to him, as if it belonged to someone else.

‘What happened, what on earth happened...’

Constance was distraught. Freddie silenced her with one hand raised like a policeman’s at a road junction.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘First, I have some questions for you. I know where you weren’t today, Constance. Perhaps you had better tell me where you were.’

There was a notepad in front of him on the table and on it were written two phone numbers. One was for the Firlands nursing home.

Freddie saw his wife’s gaze lock in on the second number. And when she eventually raised her eyes to meet his, he knew that her despair probably matched his own.