The Cipher Garden

Chapter Eighteen

The grey heron stood motionless by the edge of the water, head resting between its shoulders. It surveyed the tarn and the tangled grounds at the foot of Tarn Fell, as if contemplating Jacob Quiller’s testament to shattered faith. Daniel and Miranda paused on the winding path, not wishing to disturb its reverie.

‘It’s as mystified as you and me,’ she whispered. ‘Daniel, isn’t it time to give up on trying to make sense of the garden? This place is so lovely, let’s just appreciate what we see.’

‘You’re right.’ He put his arm around her slim shoulders. ‘I’ve been making the historian’s mistake. Conjecturing too much about the past, not making enough of the present.’

‘Life’s short.’ She trembled under his touch. ‘I dreamed of Kirsty again last night. Watching her fall in slow motion, unable to do anything to save her.’

‘There was nothing any of us could do.’

‘What could make her so unhappy? What was so bad that she couldn’t bear to carry on any longer? If only I’d talked to her more at the restaurant, perhaps I could…’

‘You can’t blame yourself. It’s crazy. We didn’t know her, didn’t have a clue what was going on inside her head.’

‘It was such a lovely evening,’ Miranda said. ‘Louise was good company, I’m sorry I was mean about her. As soon as she said she was leaving, I realised I’d been selfish.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

She cleared her throat. ‘There’s something I wanted to tell you.’

The air had chilled and at last you could believe that the heatwave might be drawing to an end. He slipped his arm off her.

‘What is it?’

‘Wipe that frown off your face, you ought to be pleased after all your nagging. I’ve decided you were right. We all need to be sure of our roots. I must set about tracing my birth mother.’

‘Seriously?’

His voice rose in surprise. As if alerted to their presence, the heron drew back its long neck and took flight. Within an instant it had disappeared among the trees.

‘Yes. It’s ridiculous, this fear of rejection. If she doesn’t want to know me, fine. I’ll survive. But I’d hate to think she was yearning to hear from me, and I froze her out of my life because she made one mistake a long, long time ago.’

‘Why the sudden change of heart?’

‘There’s a bond between parent and child, it’s unique.’ Her voice was dreamy, her eyes far away. ‘The blood-tie.’

This was precisely how he felt about his own father, and why he needed to learn more about the man’s life, what he was really like. Yet her words didn’t ring true. Whenever they’d talked about this before, Miranda had been resolute. The words, the sentiment, didn’t seem to belong to her. She’d been talked round. But not by him. And certainly not by Louise.

A phrase of Miranda’s came back into his mind as they set off back to the cottage. We have things in common.

‘You’ve talked to someone about this?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m interested, that’s all.’

‘As it happens, I have had a conversation…’

‘With Oliver Cox?’

She stared. ‘Right first time. How on earth did you figure that out?’

‘You were chatting with him in the bar at The Heights. He persuaded you, but what I’m wondering is — how did he manage it?’ He closed his eyes, breathing in her perfume. ‘Was it because Oliver was adopted too? He understood the dilemma better than the rest of us.’

‘He didn’t want to talk about it to begin with. I found it so encouraging when he urged me to trace my mum that I asked him outright if he was adopted. Typical, huh, putting my foot right in my mouth?’

‘What did he say?’

‘At first he backed right off. He’s lovely, but he’s easily knocked off balance. He actually denied it, would you believe? Said I’d put two and two together and made five.’

His face was very close to hers, but he’d shut his eyes. He was picturing her at the bar, determined not to let Oliver off the hook. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, I’d had a couple of large glasses of wine and I’d talked him into having one himself, even though he said he never drank on duty because it soon went to his head. I suppose the booze loosened both our tongues. He tried to brush me off, change the subject, make a joke of the whole thing. But I begged him to be straight with me, told him how much it mattered.’

‘And in the end he gave in.’ That was what people did with Miranda. It was always easier to surrender than to fight.

‘Yes, he finally admitted he was adopted. Even then he said he didn’t want to make it out to be such a big deal.’

‘Did he tell you about his own experience?’

‘I dragged it out of him. He said he was riven with doubt about tracing his blood-family. Once he’d dropped out of uni, he hadn’t been able to settle to anything. As a last resort, he decided to look for his real mother. He was frightened of how she would react, his dread of rejection was as intense as mine. But when at last he found her, it changed his life. No question, he told me, it was the best thing he’d ever done.’

‘Where did he meet his mother?’

‘No idea. He clammed up after that and I didn’t want to make any more of a nuisance of myself. I was grateful for his honesty.’

They were taking a short cut across the grassy area that he’d cleared. Leaving behind the yew and the monkey puzzles and the weeping willow. He was determined that they shouldn’t become trapped in the maze of the Quillers’ despair. As he walked, he was delving into the undergrowth of useless information in his mind, striving to make out what lay beneath.

He wasn’t sure of the precise chronology, but from what Hannah and Bel Jenner had told him, two things had happened shortly before Warren Howe’s murder. Oliver Cox had turned up in Old Sawrey, and Chris Gleave had disappeared. What if a young man turned up on their doorstep one fine morning and announced that Roz was his mother? If so, then judging by her age, she could only have been fourteen or fifteen when she gave birth. Chris and Roz didn’t have kids; if Chris was incapable of being a father, how might he react if a stranger blundered into their cosy little marriage and revealed something his wife had never got up the nerve to mention? He was a sensitive soul, self-consciously artistic. Perhaps he might run away and hide.

‘What do you think?’ Miranda asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re miles away, aren’t you, darling? Not very flattering. I was saying, if we’re going to ask those garden designers to give this place a makeover, perhaps we should take a few photographs so that we can remember how it used to be. Before and after shots.’

‘I want to keep the basic layout intact. The garden’s odd, but…’

‘You like it as it is?’

He groped for the right words. ‘It deserves…respect.’

‘Darling, it’s a garden, not a shrine.’

‘Even so.’

‘All right, but we need a new theme. And lots more colour. It’s drab and dark here. Except for the foxgloves. They’re starting to die off, but they are so pretty in full bloom.’

Daniel gazed at the purple flowers shaped like bells. The means by which Jacob and Alice Quiller had killed themselves.

‘You know their leaves are poisonous?’

She laughed. ‘Typical. You always have to look on the dark side.’

‘Sorry. You’re right, we need a fresh start. As for a theme — how about celebrating a new life?’

She smiled with almost childlike delight. ‘Wonderful.’

The scent of the roses was heady, butterflies were fluttering to and fro. A picture came into Daniel’s mind. Jacob Quiller bent over the ground, grim in his determination to convey a confession through his work. Back-breaking labour, but an escape from sitting inside by the fire, while his guts churned in despair. No such escape for Alice, as the clock ticked on towards the anniversary of John’s passing, the date they had fixed for ending it all. Both of them were obsessed; Jacob with macabre garden patterns, Alice with the loss of her only son. It was on Alice, of whom he knew so little, that his thoughts lingered. The housemaid who became mistress of the little cottage in the clearing, proud mother of a young man who left his native shores to fight for Queen and country, never to return.

The love between mother and child could break down all restraints and scrape away the coat of varnish that protects from raw emotion, rage, and violence. Bees buzzed in the background, Miranda ducked her head to smell the flowers, and Daniel tossed possibilities around in his mind.

Suppose Oliver had not only found his long-lost mother, but his father as well. Who was a more likely candidate to impregnate a young girl in the village than the late and unlamented Warren Howe? Consider it from Chris Gleave’s perspective. What if he was driven by jealousy, what if he hated the man who had given Roz a son, when he had not?

It might add up to a motive for murder.

‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ Hannah said.

‘You’re wrong, ma’am.’

She bent forward. ‘Ma’am? What happened to Hannah and Nick?’

‘Sorry.’ A threadbare smile. ‘You’re wrong, Hannah. You need to know this. What you do with the information is up to you.’

She poured two cups of coffee, marvelling at the steadiness of her hand while her stomach was somersaulting. She dreaded what Nick might confess. A breach of regulations, perhaps even a crime, something that would destroy his career. That he’d had a gay relationship didn’t matter, even though learning of it had floored her. Even as she watched him deliberate, working out how much to say and how much to leave out, she realised how many clues she’d missed. Nick was a good actor, but there were limits to his ability to pretend. She recalled an interview she and Nick had conducted with a man called Allardyce, not long after she’d first met Daniel Kind.

‘You know what women are like. Or maybe you don’t, eh?’

She remembered her sergeant colouring at the gibe. At the time she’d dismissed it, but although Allardyce was a brute, he’d sussed Nick out in a matter of minutes. She’d been fooled for years. Call herself a detective?

If he was a closet gay, no wonder he’d never tried it on with her. It was one of the differences, she understood now, between her relationship with Nick and that with Ben Kind. With Ben, she’d always had this sense that he wanted to touch her, but held back, perhaps because he was afraid of rejection, perhaps because he knew it was wrong to start an affair with a young subordinate. With Nick, the friendship never threatened to become more than platonic. For all her occasional wishful thinking in bed or in the bath as she recalled his smooth features and long lean limbs.

‘It’s not such an unusual story,’ he said at length. ‘A teenage boy, uncertain about his sexuality. Chris and I were each in the same boat. Conventional upbringing and outlook, desperate to be part of the crowd, but aware of secret longings too dangerous to acknowledge. No wonder we were drawn together. I’m not going to give you all the gory details, OK? Let’s just say we enjoyed each other for several months. But both of us were riddled by guilt. Especially me. Pathetic, really. In my defence, I was only seventeen. Trouble was, that was below the age of consent. Another reason for feeling bad.’

‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘Didn’t we pass a couple of posters for the Gay and Lesbian Police Association as we walked down the corridor?’

‘Do me a favour. I never wanted to be a pink policeman.’

‘All I mean is, times have changed. So have attitudes.’

‘On the surface. But that’s beside the point. I’ve no desire to join a protected species, I’m just an ordinary bloke. Which is why Chris and I split up. The angst was more than I could handle. I’d set my heart on joining the force and I wanted the orthodox life everyone in my family had. A pretty wife and two point four children, a modest mortgage and a decent pension. Boring, boring, boring, as far as Chris was concerned. He wanted to make music. Money didn’t matter to him.’

‘He had the luxury of inheriting it.’

‘Fair comment. We went our separate ways. I joined the force, got married. You know the rest.’

Do I? ‘It was your decision to break up?’

‘Yes, but Chris wasn’t bitter. We kept in touch. I went along to his concerts, every now and then. He told me he’d had a few other boyfriends, but nobody special.’

‘He wanted you to get back together again?’

‘I suppose so, but it was out of the question. I’d made my choice and so far as I was concerned, he had to respect it. Which he did. Next thing I knew, he was engaged to Roz. I didn’t know what to expect when I met her. When I found out it was a genuine love match, I was thrilled for him.’

‘All’s well that ends well?’

Nick nodded. ‘Until I heard that he’d disappeared from home, and while he was missing, Warren Howe was killed in his back garden.’

While Miranda absorbed herself with the laptop, working on a first draft of her latest article for Ethan Tiatto, Daniel stayed outside. He yearned to talk to Hannah, share his ideas about the murder with her. He took out his mobile and dialled her number. Straight to voicemail. Shit. Better to try later rather than leave a message. How to explain in a couple of crisp sentences the speculation swirling around inside his brain?

He paced up and down the path outside his own front door, striving to reconcile the known facts with his guesswork. When he’d called at Keepsake Cottage, he’d overheard the Gleaves discussing whether a secret could be kept. He’d assumed it was connected with Kirsty’s death, but there might be a link to the murder of Warren Howe.

Would there be harm in a return visit to the Gleaves’ home? Hannah might insist he shouldn’t poke his nose in, but he might have more luck than a police officer in gleaning crucial information.

He went back inside and told Miranda that he’d be out for an hour or two. She nodded, but didn’t look up from her work in progress. On his way out, he tried Hannah again. Still no answer.

Weaving through the country lanes, he stretched his brain, refining his theory that Chris Gleave had killed Warren Howe. He’d spent such a short time in the man’s company, he found it impossible to do more than guess at what made him tick. By instinct he rebelled against the idea of a likeable musician committing a savage murder, but it made sense as a crime of passion, fuelled by jealousy and loathing.

Rounding a bend, he found his way blocked by a farm boy standing in the middle of the road with upraised hand. Behind him plodded a herd of cattle, on their way from one field to another. Daniel breathed out. His reasoning had also run into a jam. How had Chris contrived his alibi? He must have been in the frame for the murder, yet the police hadn’t come close to pinning him to the scene. A bizarre location for a murderer to choose, if there was any degree of planning. Why kill someone in your own back garden? It had to be a crime born of panic, yet that didn’t square with an alibi strong enough to defy intensive scrutiny from a team of detectives under pressure to solve a high-profile crime.

While he waited, he tried Hannah’s number again. Her disembodied voice once more invited him to leave a message; once more he decided not to bother. He fancied setting up another meeting with her to reveal the ingenuity of his theory. If she doused it with cold water, he wouldn’t care. What he wanted most was a fresh excuse to share her company.

He was asking himself what this said about his relationship with Miranda when the last cow trudged through the gate and the boy waved his thanks. Daniel returned his smile. A chance to put his foot down and dodge a mystery even more awkward than Warren Howe’s murder.

‘Did Roz know about you and Chris?’

‘If she did, she never dropped a hint.’

‘And when he left home?’

‘I kept my mouth shut.’ Nick bowed his head. ‘To this day, I’m not sure if that was right or wrong. I didn’t have a clue what had happened to him. There was no reason to believe his past had any bearing on his disappearance. Of course, I couldn’t help wondering. Had he picked someone up in a park or public toilet and been bashed over the head for his pains? Anything was possible. But there was no body. So I hoped against hope that he would come home to Keepsake Cottage.’

‘Which he did.’

‘Eventually. I must say I didn’t buy his explanation for going AWOL. I mean, his music was important to him, and the poor response to his CD must have been disheartening. But vanishing from sight seemed like a massive over-reaction, even if he’d had a nervous breakdown.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Not officially. I wasn’t supposed to discuss the Howe murder with him, but keeping to the rules didn’t prove difficult. Ten days after he came back, he agreed to go out with me for a couple of beers. We went to a pub in Barrow where neither of us were likely to be recognised. Before he’d downed his first half pint of Stella, he was spilling the beans. Poor bastard, he was desperate to talk to someone who might understand.’

‘Which you did?’

Nick nodded. ‘He told me he’d fallen in love for the first time in his life.’

Hannah opened her eyes wide. ‘With?’

‘Oliver Cox’s predecessor as chef at The Heights. A Scots lad called Jason Goddard, utterly gorgeous if Chris was to be believed. Probably he wasn’t, given that love is blind. And Chris was head over heels, that was for sure. He was willing to give up everything for this kid, he just couldn’t contemplate losing him. It was a mid-life crisis, not really love at all. Wild infatuation would be nearer the mark. There was only one snag.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Hannah groaned. ‘The devotion wasn’t reciprocated.’

‘Life’s so unfair. Jason was notoriously camp and promiscuous. I heard all this long before I had any idea that Chris had fallen for him. My take is, Jason led Chris on and Chris was more than willing to be led. The trouble was that Jason fancied a bit of fun, not a lifelong union. When Chris started getting heavy and spoke about leaving Roz so the two of them could be together, Jason couldn’t handle it and took fright. There was nothing tying him to the Lake District, so he ran off to London. What he didn’t bargain for was Chris following him.’

‘And the nervous breakdown?’

‘He told the truth about that. Down in London, everything became messy. Chris haunting Jason’s footsteps, Jason threatening to sue Chris for harassment. In the end, Jason lost his cool and resorted to more direct methods. He arranged for a couple of thugs to beat Chris up.’

‘On the day Warren Howe was murdered in his garden back home?’ Hannah shook her head at the irony of it. ‘Because of the attack, no one had a chance of proving he was guilty of murder. Talk about a blessing in disguise.’

Roz Gleave seemed calmer today. Was this because Chris wasn’t around? He had left an hour earlier, she said, on his way to Lancaster to negotiate with the manager of a folk club. She cast a wary glance at the darkening sky as she led Daniel round the back of Keepsake Cottage, and suggested they make the most of the weather before they were drenched by the thunderstorm the Met Office had threatened. They sat on opposite sides of the teak table at the rear of the house, looking up towards the terrace where Warren Howe had been cut down.

‘Sorry I was so abrupt last time we met. We weren’t in the mood to be hospitable after the terrible news about poor Kirsty. Now, if you don’t mind, I can only spare you ten minutes. I’m expecting a friend to call round for a cup of tea and a chat.’

‘Ten minutes is all I ask.’

‘Were your ears burning yesterday? I was talking about you to Marc Amos. He sang your praises; tells me you’re a valued customer.’

‘Marc’s a friend of yours?’

‘We scarcely know each other. Both of us make a living from books, but in different parts of the market. He sells them second hand; I’m rather keen to make a profit the first time my publications leave the shelves. We don’t get a percentage the second time around. I met Hannah, his partner, the other day. Young for a chief inspector, I thought. Or perhaps that just shows my own advancing years.’

‘It was Marc who told me about the book by Eleanor Sawtell.’

‘So I gather. Any progress with your garden mystery?’

‘A little.’

She looked him in the eye. ‘Marc mentioned you were involved with one of his partner’s cases not so long ago.’

‘Hannah heads the county’s cold case team. I like to think there’s a parallel between her work and historical research. Not sure I’ve persuaded her, mind.’

‘And you were at the airfield when Kirsty died.’

‘I’d met her at the restaurant the previous day.’

‘Quite a coincidence.’

Time to break cover, Daniel decided. ‘Not really, Roz. Truth is, I’m incurably inquisitive. So I can’t help being intrigued by what I’ve heard about the murder of Warren Howe.’

The temperature was plunging with every word he uttered. She pursed her lips. ‘I see.’

‘Must be painful for you, having the whole business resurrected after all these years.’

‘We could do without it. That was a difficult time for Chris and me.’

‘All the more so because Warren was a former boyfriend?’

‘We went out a few times as kids,’ she snapped. ‘Nothing more. It was buried in the past, it didn’t mean a thing. I was sorry he died such a brutal death, but candidly, I was sorrier still that it happened here. I won’t pretend that I spent much time in mourning. Warren wasn’t a nice man. Not like his daughter. Poor Kirsty.’

‘One thing I’ve learned about history is that things we believed were buried in the past can reach out and poke us in the eye today.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your relationship with Warren. I hate to be intrusive, but I’ve found out that Oliver Cox is adopted. He told my partner, Miranda, and I couldn’t help wondering…’

Roz Gleave’s face contorted with dismay, bordering on disbelief. ‘He discussed his past with someone he hardly knew?’

‘She’s adopted as well. She was confiding in him.’

‘My God, he always said he would never…’

‘She’s a journalist. Very accomplished at worming information out of people. I’m sure when Oliver told her a little about his own past, he didn’t mean to cause any embarrassment.’

‘Meaning what?’

Daniel said softly, ‘Meaning that I’m sure he didn’t intend anyone to suspect that you might be his mother.’

She put a hand to her mouth and he thought she was going to faint. But when she spoke, it wasn’t to admit that he’d seen through to the truth.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

He’d expected outrage or evasion. Not amazement. It felt like being hosed with cold water. ‘You’re denying it?’

‘You bet I’m bloody well denying it!’ She stood up. ‘You’d better go.’

No one could feign such shock. Her face was reddening, astonishment giving way to anger. And yet he couldn’t imagine that his theory was so wide of the mark.

‘Oliver said that meeting his birth mother changed his life. Until then he’d been a drifter…’

Roz’s hands were on her hips. She nodded towards the path that led around the cottage.

‘Please don’t outstay your welcome, Mr Kind.’

Oh Jesus. He got to his feet. ‘I’m wrong, aren’t I? Oliver isn’t your son.’

She said hoarsely, ‘I’m not able to have children. It’s been a great sadness, but at least I have a marvellous husband. Now — please go.’

Hannah said, ‘You talked to Chris after he came back to the Lakes?’

‘He asked if we could meet. When he heard about the murder, he was overwhelmed by guilt, for having left Roz to endure the trauma on her own. He was afraid Charlie would find some way of pinning the crime on her, but that was never an option. Her alibi was as unbreakable as his. I wanted to know if he had any idea of who was responsible, but if he had, he wasn’t telling. He hadn’t wished Warren dead, but his only concern was to return a semblance of normality to his life.’

‘So he settled for domestic bliss rather than chasing after unsuitable young men?’

Nick gave her a sharp glance. ‘I’ve never asked if he’s strayed since then, and he hasn’t told me. One thing he did make clear, he didn’t care if Warren’s murder was never solved. I said it would only take a single stroke of luck, and he said he hoped we never got it. Whoever had been driven to such violence must have had good reason to kill Warren. We’d never argued until then. I thought he was wrong to side with the murderer, when the crime had put Roz and everyone in Old Sawrey under the microscope.’

‘The ordeal by innocence?’

‘Yes.’ Nick exhaled. ‘I suppose things were never the same between us afterwards. Since then we’ve not spoken more than once or twice a year. But he promised that he’d never told anyone we’d been lovers. Not even Roz.’

‘Did she know he was gay?’

‘Not according to Chris. Until he explained about Jason, she didn’t have the foggiest.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘Yes.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘If you told Janice I was gay, she’d never believe you.’

Hannah shrugged. ‘You and Chris, it was a long time ago. You were kids, experimenting. He may have played around since, but…’

‘I haven’t?’ Nick’s face was desolate. ‘That doesn’t mean I haven’t been tempted. Which is what I’m afraid of, Hannah, if you really want to know. Janice might not have guessed and you might not have guessed. But I know who I am and what’s in my heart and mind. What keeps me awake at night is the fear that I’m living a lie.’

As Daniel walked back to his car, he felt Roz’s eyes boring into his back. She had retreated into her cottage, only to stand at the window of the front room and keep watch, making sure that he didn’t hang around.

For all his hot embarrassment, he didn’t mean to be hurried. There was too much to think over. He unwound the sunroof. The air was heavy, soon there would be the first drops of rain. As he changed the CD, his brain was racing. How could he have made such a mistake?

In the distance, he heard a car engine. Someone was coming to Keepsake Cottage. The friend Roz had mentioned? He glanced back at the house and caught sight of Roz’s face. It was haggard with fear.

He fastened his seatbelt, taking an age over it, wanting to see who visited Roz. Within a minute, his time-wasting was rewarded as Bel Jenner’s BMW glided to a halt alongside his Audi.

She opened her door and treated him to a guileless smile. ‘Hello again. Small world.’

He unbuckled the seatbelt and got out too. The cottage door opened; in a moment Roz would join them and try to shoo him away. But he only had eyes for Bel.

The dark hair, high cheekbones and beaky nose were clues, of course. The resemblance wasn’t obvious, but it was there if you searched hard.

Small world was right. This time he was sure. Oliver Cox was Bel Jenner’s son.