A Place Of Safety

Chapter Twelve

In the end they caught her quite quickly. Barnaby had feared she would go to earth, change her appearance again and simply vanish into the city’s underworld. If not London then Birmingham or Manchester or Edinburgh. And with no photograph to circulate, the chances of picking her up were practically nil.

But, to cover every exit, both of the names she had been using were flashed to all air and sea ports and rail terminals to the Continent. She was spotted by the Eurostar departure point at Waterloo, travelling under a name that Barnaby immediately recognised. The name by which she had first introduced herself, Tanya Walker.

A sorrier sight, thought Barnaby as she was brought into the interview room, he had rarely seen. When he was a constable on the beat he had sometimes had to answer calls from department stores who had found a toddler that had become separated from its mother. The same bewildered panic in her eyes, the same wailing loss. What was it about that vicious bastard Jackson that could bring this girl and Fainlight likewise to their knees in sorrow?

The tape was running. And, unlike the interview two days earlier, this time there was no difficulty extracting information. She answered all his questions unhesitatingly, without ever a pause to reflect, in a flat, colourless voice. She did not care. She had nothing left to lose. And thank God she did, thought the chief inspector, for with Jackson dead, how else would he have unravelled the tangled mess that had been jamming up his thought processes for the past two weeks.

Though Barnaby had had several hours to prepare for this interview, there was more than one aspect to the case and he had not quite decided which to broach first. He turned them over in his mind in reverse order of importance. First came the least interesting - the girl’s relationship with Jackson. She was plainly in love with him, he had had power over her, she would do anything to please him - the old, old story. Then her version of what had happened in Lomax Road. Third, the background to her connection to Carlotta Ryan, the girl who had lived in the room next door. Finally her exact role in the elaborate intrigue at the Old Rectory which had culminated in the murder of Charlie Leathers. Though this last was by far the most interesting and important, Barnaby perversely chose to begin with the third.

‘Tell me about Carlotta, Tanya.’

‘I told you about her. When you come to the flat.’

‘What happened to her?’

She looked vacantly at him.

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Course she’s still alive. What you on about?’

‘Then where is she?’ asked Sergeant Troy.

‘Having the time of her bloody life, I should think. Halfway round the world on a cruise ship.’

‘And how did that come about?’

‘An ad in that stage paper. She auditioned about ten days before she was due to go down the Rectory. They offered her the job, topless dancing. A year’s contract. She jumped at it.’ Tanya looked across at Sergeant Troy and for the first time showed a spark of animation. She said, ‘Wouldn’t you?’

Troy did not respond. It would not have been appropriate but also he didn’t want to. He remembered his first meeting with this girl and how touched he had been by her appearance and larky chatter and the sad fact that she did not know who her dad was. Probably just another lie. He tightened his lips against the chance of a smile, unaware of how sanctimonious it made him look.

‘So whose idea was it that you go to the Lawrences instead?’ asked Barnaby, pleased that at least he knew now why the flat had been cleaned out. ‘Yours or hers?’

‘Terry’s. He liked the thought of being able to keep an eye on me. Mind you, he’d get up the Smoke when he could. He was here when you turned up. Hiding in the bedroom.’

Barnaby cursed silently for a moment. But his voice was even as he said, ‘So you knew him before?’

‘For ever. On and off.’

‘Must have been mostly off,’ said Sergeant Troy. ‘All the time he’s been banged up.’

‘Yeah, mostly.’ Tanya looked across at Troy then with grave contempt. Troy flushed with resentment and thought she’d got a bloody cheek. Even so, he was the first to look away.

‘But you pretended otherwise?’ said Barnaby.

‘S’right. He didn’t want the connection to show.’

‘Because of the grand plan?’

‘Partly. But also it’s his nature to conceal things. It was the only way he ever felt safe.’

‘So how was it supposed to work?’

‘It was brilliant. We had two plans, one for day, one for after dark, depending on when Mrs L took off. I lifted some jewellery, old-fashioned stuff she were keen on.’

‘It belonged to her mother.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

Barnaby held out his hand. ‘You wouldn’t happen ...?’

Tanya hesitated.

‘Come on, Tanya. You’ve admitted taking them. Giving them back will look good on your sheet.’

Tanya opened her bag and put the earrings in Barnaby’s hand. They looked very small. Small but beautiful.

‘Now you’re going to flog ’em, ain’tcha?’

‘That’s right,’ said Sergeant Troy.

Barnaby asked what happened next.

‘When she come to my room about it I went mad, tearing up stuff and screaming me life was over. Then I ran away. We knew she’d come after me ’cause she was like that.’

‘Concerned,’ suggested Barnaby.

‘It worked perfect. If it hadn’t, Terry’d got plenty other ideas up his sleeve.’

‘She thought she’d pushed you in,’ said Barnaby. ‘She was frantic.’

‘That was the point,’ Tanya explained patiently. ‘She ain’t going to pay up if I’d jumped, is she?’

‘Why should she pay up at all?’ snapped Sergeant Troy.

‘Because she can afford it. Because she’s got a bloody great house and somebody to clean it for her and somebody else to do the fucking garden. And because she’s never done a stroke of work in her life!’

‘I take it you didn’t like her,’ said Barnaby.

‘Ohh ...’ Tanya sighed. ‘She weren’t too bad. It were holy Joe I couldn’t stand. Always touching you. Accidentally on purpose - know what I mean? Hands like damp dishcloths.’

‘So where did you get out of the river?’

‘Same place I got in. Terry had floated an old tyre days before. Tied with a rope to a hook under the bridge. I grabbed it, hung on till she’d run away then climbed out.’

I knew about the tyre. Barnaby flashed back to the river-bank search report. A patch of scrub - crisp packets, a pushchair frame, an old tyre. Used as a swing, the description had said, because it still had the rope round it. And I passed on that. Perhaps Joyce was right. Maybe it was time to pack it in.

‘Then where did you go?’ Sergeant Troy was picturing her, despite himself, cold, shivering and soaking wet in the late dark.

‘Nipped back to the house. Hid in the garden till Terry come home. Spent the night in his flat. Next day hitched to Causton and took a train to the Smoke.’

Barnaby controlled his breathing, kept the rising anger in its place. Put aside his thoughts on hours, days even, of wasted time (not least his own), shifting seas of paper detailing useless interviews regarding the night in question, extensive inquiries with wide-ranging health and police authorities about a possible drowning. In short, a massive waste of desperately stretched police resources.

‘So what went wrong?’ asked Sergeant Troy. He had noted the savage set of the chief’s mouth and the angry flush on his cheeks and felt the next question might be better coming from him.

‘That cross-eyed git, Charlie Leathers. He’s what went wrong. Terry’d done his blackmail letter, addressed to her, marked Personal. I posted it, first class, main office in Causton. Being that close you nearly always get twenty-four-hour delivery. He watches for the van then makes up some excuse to get into the house to see she’s got it all right.’

‘How was he supposed to know that?’ asked Sergeant Troy.

‘Do me a favour,’ said Tanya. ‘She ain’t going to be tripping around singin’ oh what a perfect day, I wanna spend it with you, with that burning a hole in her pocket, is she?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Barnaby. He was thinking of Ann Lawrence. Kind, ineffectual, innocent. Going quietly about her daily business. Opening her post.

‘Anyway, she’d got it all right. He found her half dead with fright and the letter on the floor. Trouble is, it weren’t his letter. It had stuck-on writing just the same but there was less words. And arranged different. You can imagine how he felt.’

‘Must have been quite a blow,’ said Barnaby.

‘Yeah. But he’s at his best, Terry, with his back against the wall. So, figuring a blackmail letter means payment, he watches her all the time. He thought she’d probably have to deliver at night and that’s what happened. So he tails her, planning to pick up the money hisself. After all, we’re the ones who earned it. But it weren’t his intention to kill nobody.’

Barnaby, tempted to say, ‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ restrained the impulse. He would do nothing to interfere with this, so far, wonderfully simple unravelling.

‘But Charlie got there first. He was actually taking the money when Terry spotted him.’

‘Some people,’ muttered Sergeant Troy.

‘Just as well Terry happened to have a length of wire in his pocket,’ said Barnaby.

‘You gotta carry something for protection in this dee and ay,’ Tanya explained, less patient by now. Her attitude seemed to be that Barnaby, of all people, should appreciate what a wicked world was out there. ‘And just as well he did, the way things went.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Charlie drew a knife on him. They had a terrible struggle.’

The two policemen looked at each other. Both remembered the orderly neatness of the murder scene.

‘So it was definitely self-defence.’ Tanya, having noticed and read the look, became quite vehement.

‘And what about the dog?’ asked Sergeant Troy. ‘Was that “self-defence”?’

‘What you on about? What dog?’

Barnaby put his hand quickly on his sergeant’s arm to stop any passionate denunciation of Jackson’s cruelty to the animal. The last thing he wanted was an emotional diversion.

‘So what happened to Terry’s letter, Tanya?’

‘It come the next day. He caught the mail van, offered to take the post up to the house and got it back. Then he sent another, by hand this time, like Charlie, asking for five.’

‘And no doubt it would have been more the third time?’

‘Why not? Terry reckoned that place must have been worth a quarter of a million. Anyway, he said we should give her a breather - a false sense of security, like. Maybe for a month. We was going to Paris for a few days. He’d got the five grand—’

‘And you’ve got it now, Tanya. Right?’

‘No. He never brought it with him.’

‘You expect us to believe that?’ said Troy.

‘It’s true. He hid it ’cause he thought you might be round the flat with a warrant. Then he couldn’t pick it up ’cause that filthy poof was spying on him. With binoculars.’

Barnaby thought that certainly tied in with what Bennet had later told him about Fainlight. The money was probably stashed with the clothes in the rucksack. Find that and you’d copped the jackpot.

‘Do you know how he came by the second lot of money?’ Sergeant Troy attempted ironic patience but, as always, failed to pull it off. Even to himself he sounded merely peevish.

‘Same as the first time. How many ways are there to collect a drop?’

‘Try following the victim, crashing her head down on the bonnet of a car and just taking it.’

Tanya stared at Barnaby who had spoken, then at Sergeant Troy and back to Barnaby again.

‘You tricky bastards. You wouldn’t tell such lies if he was here to defend himself. She left it in Carter’s Wood just like the first time.’

‘Mrs Lawrence didn’t leave any money anywhere. She’d decided not to pay and was returning it to the bank.’

‘Yeah, well, that might be what she says—’

‘She isn’t saying anything,’ said Troy. ‘She’s been in intensive care for the last three days. It’s not even certain that she’ll recover.’

Barnaby looked across the table at the girl. She had begun to look pitifully uncertain and his gaze was not unsympathetic.

‘He did have a record of violence, Tanya.’

‘No he didn’t.’ She immediately contradicted herself. ‘There was reasons.’

‘For a knife attack on—’

‘He never done that. Terry was the youngest, he took the blame so he could belong. The actual guy would’ve got life. On the streets you gotta be accepted. If you’re not, you’re finished.’

Troy wanted to ask about the old man left in the gutter but was strangely reluctant. The fact was he was fighting sympathetic feelings himself. Not for Jackson, never that, but for her. She was visibly distressed now and was struggling not to cry. Barnaby had no such qualms.

‘There was another incident. An old man—’

‘Billy Wiseman. He was lucky.’

‘Lucky?’

‘I know people - he’d never have got up again.’

‘What do you mean, Tanya?’

‘I were ten when they fostered me, him and his wife. What he done - I couldn’t even say it in words. Over and over. Sometimes in the middle of the night I’d wake up and he’d be ... Then, when I were fourteen, I were down by Limehouse Walk with Terry. I just started talking and it all came out. He never said nothing. But his face was terrible.’ Tanya gave a single cry then. A wild sound, like a frightened bird.

Barnaby said, ‘I’m sorry.’

And Troy thought, Christ, I’ve had enough of this.

‘I hadn’t seen him for ages. He’d been in two or three places, then Barnardo’s. I’d been moved about - once we lost touch entirely. Not knowing where each other was. And that was the worst. Like everything in the world closing down at once.’ Tears poured down like rain. ‘He was the only person who ever loved me.’

Troy clumsily attempted comfort. ‘You’ll meet someone else, Tanya.’

‘What?’ She gazed at him blankly.

‘You’re young. Pretty—’

‘You stupid fuck.’ She drew away from them then, staring from one to the other with fastidious contempt. ‘Terry wasn’t my boy friend. He was my brother.’

They would have solved the crime anyway in a couple of days as things turned out. When the prints in Tanya’s room in Stepney turned out to be a perfect match with the ones in the Old Rectory attic.

Or when Barnaby remembered that Vivienne Calthrop had described Carlotta as far too short to be a model so how come she had to duck her head not to bang it on the Old Rectory door frame? Or when the bicycle on which Jackson had ridden back from Causton was found propped against the wall of Fainlight’s garage under half a dozen others. And the money, still in the saddle bag. The rucksack and clothes were never found. Received opinion in the incident room had it that Jackson had buried them under the other rubbish in the Fainlights’ wheelie-bin the day before it was emptied.

Valentine Fainlight, when questioned further, admitted that he had shown Jackson round the house and garden on one occasion when his sister was out. And that the man could have taken the garden key away while he was looking elsewhere but what the hell did it matter now anyway and, Jesus, when in hell were they going to leave him alone?

‘So how do you see it being worked, chief?’ asked Sergeant Troy as he and Barnaby walked away from the ravishing glass construction for the last time.

‘Presumably he biked over that back field, through the gate into the garden, down the side of the house and into the garage. Then he could duck down behind the Alvis, change clothes and hide his stuff to be sorted later.’

‘What d’you think he’ll get, Fainlight?’

‘Depends. Murder’s a serious charge.’

‘It was an accident. You heard what he said to his sister.’

‘I also heard him say he was blind with jealousy. He knew the man, Troy. They had a relationship. Which means murder is a possibility. The Met were right to charge him.’

‘But he was allowed bail.’ Troy was getting quite worked up. ‘That must mean something.’

‘It means he’s not regarded as a danger to the public. Not that he hasn’t committed any crime.’

‘So he might be found guilty?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Whether anti-homosexual bias can be weeded out in the jury. How impressed they are by Fainlight’s standing as a well-known author. How appalled they are when Jackson’s record is read out. How they respond to Tanya Walker’s testimony, which will be hostile to say the least.’

Tanya’s interview had concluded with her description of the fight that led to her brother’s death. According to her, Valentine had burst in, attacked Terry, dragged him over the landing and forced him back through the stair rail. Afraid for her own life, she had run away down the fire escape.

‘The Crown have a witness as well, chief. DS Bennet.’

‘He only saw Jackson fall. She can say what led up to it.’

‘And lie.’

‘Probably. The girl’s heart is broken, she’ll want revenge. And who could prove perjury?’

‘Do for his books, this, won’t it?’

‘As he writes for children, I would say so.’

Barnaby had been shocked at Fainlight’s appearance. He looked like a zombie. In his eyes the death of all life and hope. There was not even the colour of despair. His frame, now much less stocky, folded in on itself with utter weariness. He seemed inches shorter, pounds lighter.

Barnaby didn’t envy Louise. He was sure she could tough it out, nurse Fainlight through his dark night of the soul. She had the love and the patience and, certainly at present, the energy. Everything about her had shone. Her eyes, her skin and hair. Her cheeks were rosy, not with the usual skilfully applied cosmetics but with health and happiness.

And she had time on her side. The man who had caused her brother so much agony no longer existed. At least in the flesh. But in Fainlight’s heart - that was something else. And in his mind, where all troubles start and end, what of that? Eaten up by guilt and loneliness, starved of the only company his unhappy soul craved, how would he survive, in or out of prison?

‘If only,’ murmured Barnaby to himself. ‘Sometimes I think they’re the saddest words in the English language.’

‘I’d say pointless more,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘You would,’ replied the chief inspector. He was used to his sergeant’s phlegmatic attitude and occasionally even welcomed it as a sensible corrective to his own rather free-ranging imagination.

‘What’s done’s done,’ pursued Troy. Then, just to make sure there had been no misunderstanding, ‘Junna regret ay reean.’

They were making their way now across the Green, passing the village sign with its robustly priapic badger, stooks of wheat, cricket bats and lime-green chrysanthemum.

Barnaby noticed several pale furry dogs hurling themselves about in a transport of delight, happily too far away to make even the most brief exchange of courtesies with their owner feasible. A small terrier attempted to join in, not making too bad a fist of it. The owners of the dogs walked arm in arm, heads close together, talking.

‘Look who’s over there,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘I’ve seen who’s over there,’ replied the chief inspector, quickening his step. ‘Thanks very much.’

A few moments later they came to the river. Barnaby stopped by the low bridge to look into the swiftly flowing water. He wondered how it had looked in the moonlight on the night Tanya ran away. There must have been a moon for Charlie Leathers to see the faces of the two women as they swayed on the bridge locked together in a struggle which ended with an almighty splash. And he thought what he saw was for real, as we all do. Who questions the evidence of their own eyes?

‘I was thinking, sir. That Tanya—’

‘Poor lass,’ said Barnaby, somewhat to his own surprise.

‘Exactly,’ Troy responded eagerly. ‘If anyone needed a friend—’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘There wouldn’t be anything in it—’

‘Yes there would. Eventually.’

‘But what’ll happen to her?’

‘She’ll survive,’ said Barnaby, with a confidence he didn’t really feel. ‘After all, she managed to fool us.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Not drowning, Troy, but waving.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Never mind.’

Troy bit back a tsk of irritation. It was always happening, this sort of thing. The chief’d say something a little bit difficult, a bit obscure. Some quote or other from something nobody in their right mind had ever heard of. Then, when he tried for an explanation, he was brushed off.

Fair enough, you might say. But then don’t go on at this person for not knowing about opera and theatre and heavy music and books and stuff. Troy had looked up Philistine in Talisa Leanne’s dictionary when he had got home the other night and was not best pleased. Was it any wonder he was ‘a person deficient in liberal culture’ when every time he asked a question some know-all not a stone’s throw away was for ever shutting him up.

‘How about some lunch in the Red Lion?’

‘Sounds good, chief.’

‘What do you fancy? My treat.’

‘Pie and chips’d be nice. And some of that raspberry Pavlova.’

‘Excellent,’ said Barnaby as they strode across the forecourt. ‘That should keep you on your toes.’

As things turned out, Louise did not personally nurse her brother back to health. When Valentine returned to Fainlights, it was simply for the few days it took to organise the packing of his clothes, computer and personal files, and a few books. He planned to rent somewhere in London until the trial which he was told would probably not be for several months.

While he was looking for somewhere to stay he was offered the attic flat in his publisher’s house in Hampstead. The usual tenant, the publisher’s son, was now in his third year at Oxford and rarely at home. Though it was rather cramped, Valentine settled there and gradually gave up the idea of looking for another place until the future became more clear. Not that he would have used such a phrase. He rarely thought beyond the present day or even the present moment, simply drifting through the hours in a state of stupefied loneliness.

Louise rang constantly. In the end he used to pull the plug, sometimes for days at a time. Once or twice, at her insistent persuasion, they met for lunch but it was not a success. Val was not hungry and her worried urging that he must eat got on his nerves. The second time they parted, Louise was struggling not to cry and Val was guiltily assuring her that it was all his fault before hugging her in a stiffly formal way and saying, ‘Keep in touch.’

In the train returning to Great Missenden, Louise’s natural resilience reasserted itself. It followed that these things took time. She just hadn’t appreciated quite how much time. Everything would be all right, eventually. Still, she was rather glad, getting into her little yellow car at the station, that she would not be going home to an empty house.

When Ann was finally ready to leave hospital for what she had been warned might be quite a lengthy period of convalescence, she was unsure where to go. Her soul revolted at the idea of returning to the Old Rectory. The image of her childhood home had become so abhorrent she almost felt she never wanted even to see it again. But her only relative was an elderly aunt in Northumberland whom Ann had not seen for almost twenty years, during which their correspondence had been perfunctory to say the least. There was also the necessity, as a post-operative outpatient, to be near the hospital. Then, as the day of her release drew near, Louise suggested to Ann that she stay at Fainlights.

Louise had visited Stoke Mandeville almost every day and though very little was said on either side, the long silences were never uncomfortable. Both women, having grown confident in each other’s company, felt the arrangement would suit them.

Inevitably there was a certain awkwardness when Ann first arrived. They had to get used to living together. Ann wanted to do more than she was able out of gratitude. Louise refused all help, convinced she could manage by herself, though for years she’d never tried. (On hearing of Valentine’s crime and subsequent arrest, the domestic agency promptly struck the name Fainlight from their books.)

Eventually it was Hetty, calling in frequently anyway to see Ann, who started helping out. This suited everyone. Louise because she didn’t have to do housework, which she loathed. Ann because she loved seeing Hetty, almost the only constant in her life from its very beginning. And Hetty because she needed the money for removal expenses. She had managed to get a council exchange for a house nearer Pauline and the family. True, Alan and his mates were sorting out the move so she only needed enough for the hire of a van plus the cost of a crate of beer and fish and chips all round, but Hetty liked to pay her way.

Once the news got around that Mrs Lawrence was well enough to see people, the village began to arrive with small gifts: books or flowers or homemade cakes and sweets. Someone brought a handkerchief exquisitely embroidered with her name. Ann was frequently moved to tears by such kindness. Louise, a bit put out at first at the never-ending stream of well-wishers, eventually got to quite enjoy the company. She would put the kettle on, get a cake out and make people welcome. Assorted dogs also came and went. Louise, never previously interested in animals, got so fond of Candy she seriously thought of getting a pet herself.

But all of this was daytime business. After dark things were more difficult. This was the most painful time for the two women. The time when their friendship, which was to endure for the rest of their lives, was truly forged.

Louise had asked advice from the hospital almoner before collecting her friend. She had been told to expect possible sleepless nights and instructed on how to cope with nightmares as well as what was described as post-traumatic stress. But, to her immense relief, Ann remembered nothing of the attack or even of driving into Causton. The last thing she said she could recall was knocking on the door of Lionel’s study to tell him lunch was ready. The one thing Louise had not been prepared for and found hard to cope with was Ann’s overwhelming sense of guilt and remorse.

Ann simply could not rid herself of the conviction that she could have prevented the whole tragic business if only she had had the strength of mind to stand up to her husband in the matter of Terry Jackson. She had known from the first that there was something dangerous about him. This fear had made her refuse to have the man in the house yet she had not had the courage to demand that he be banished entirely. If only she had ... So Ann had wept and blamed herself and Louise had comforted her and assured her she was blameless.

This wretched scenario was repeated day after day. Louise listened sympathetically at first even though she considered such protestations of guilt to be quite unfounded. Then they began to seem to her neurotic. Eventually, when her endless assurances seemed hardly to be listened to, she had got angry. Concealed her anger then couldn’t conceal it. Showed it and Ann got even more upset. Then Ann got angry.

Between them, helped by an awful lot of wine, they gradually washed with their tears, and hung out to dry, their deepest and most secret fears and longings. Ann wept for her years of loneliness and out of a passionate regret for a sterile half-life, Louise for the failure of a marriage she had thought made in heaven, for the loss of the brother she had known and for the sad, shambling counterfeit that had taken his place. For both of them, Louise so austere, aloof and cynical, and Ann so repressed, shy and anxious, this emotional exposure was a new and rather alarming experience.

Afterwards they were reserved, even a bit cool with each other. Several days were spent like this but the memory of their previous closeness was always there, a subterranean warmth, and gradually they relaxed again into comfortable familiarity.

They talked about money. Neither woman would have any serious worries although Louise would be by far the better off. Goshawk Freres had finally agreed on the amount for her golden handshake. Although somewhat depleted by litigation fees, it was still handsome. Her share of the Holland Park house, now sold, was over two hundred thousand pounds. And, sooner rather than later, she would be working again.

Ann was unsure that she would ever be working. The vivid longings for a new life, the daydreams which had seemed so exciting and realisable when she had been driving along in the sunshine towards Causton singing ‘Penny Lane’ had been wiped from her mind by the blow she had received. But the memory of her husband’s scathing remarks had not. Didn’t she know that these days people were made to retire at forty? As she had never had to cope with real life, how on earth could she possibly ever expect to do a real job?

Louise was furious when she heard all this. Ann was barely middle-aged, very intelligent, a pleasure to look at (or would be when Louise had finished with her), and she could do anything in the world she wanted to do. So there. Ann smiled and said she would have to see how things went.

The Old Rectory, the estate agent promised, would make a very good price especially as it had what he called ‘a granny flat’. The income from her trust fund, which now supported one person instead of two adults plus a steady stream of hangers-on and an old, infirm car would be more than adequate for her simple needs.

Largely because of the terrible disaster Lionel’s actions had brought upon both herself and Louise, Ann was weaned without too much difficulty from her plan to buy him somewhere to live and to offer financial support. At first she had protested, saying she couldn’t give him nothing. But, as Louise pointed out, even if she gave him nothing it was still ten times more than he had ever given her. And when Louise heard that Ann was also determined to set up a proper, inflation-proof pension for Hetty, she explained that accomplishing both and getting another house for herself was out of the question.

Ann visited the Old Rectory only once in the company of her solicitor. She selected the few pieces of furniture and personal things that she wished to keep and he arranged for them to be stored and for everything else to be sold. The whole transaction took less than an hour and she could not wait to get away. They also briefly discussed her will which was kept at his office. She intended to make a new one and they made an appointment for early the next month.

As things fell out, Ann never saw Lionel again. By the time he got round to visiting the hospital she had recovered enough to tell her doctor she could not cope with even a moment of his company and admission was refused. He did not show up a second time.

A letter from Lucy and Breakbean, Causton’s only legal aid solicitors, suggesting he was entitled to half a share of the Old Rectory was answered by Ann’s solicitor, Taylor Reading, in no uncertain terms. A threat of further action on Lionel’s part came to nothing. The following December Ann had rather a pathetic Christmas card giving an address in Slough, to which she did not respond. And that was that, really.

A few years later someone who knew Lionel told Ann they had seen him as they were leaving the National Theatre after an evening performance. Once more wearing his dog collar, he was helping to give out soup and sandwiches to the homeless on the Embankment. But it was only a glimpse and they admitted later they could easily have been mistaken.