The Malcontenta

16

Brock turned and was startled to see Grace Carrington in his bed. She was staring at him wide-eyed over the edge of the blankets. Then he noticed that the curtains were different, the wardrobe in a different place.

‘Oh no,’ he groaned. ‘The wrong door.’

‘What?’ She was looking at him as if he were mad. Behind him Brock could hear voices approaching.

He took another deep breath. ‘I was trying to break into my own room. I locked myself out. But in the dark I thought your door was mine.’

Her eyes moved from his flushed face to the jack handle in his hand. Then she too heard the voices outside. ‘What’s going on, David?’ she whispered.

He hesitated. ‘I’ve been misbehaving, Grace. And I very nearly got caught.’

She watched him, then said, ‘Do you want to leave now?’

‘I’d rather hang on a moment — if you don’t mind.’

‘Then you’d better sit down and explain what you’re doing in my room in the middle of the night.’ She seemed calmer now.

So he sat on the end of her bed and told her about Kathy, and about her visit with Dowling to his home. He described some of Kathy’s frustrations with the case, and his offer to spend some time at Stanhope. And he spoke of his reasons for breaking into the clinic’s computer that evening.

‘I can’t believe that a senior police officer would do such a thing,’ she said. ‘What if you’d been caught?’

He nodded and hung his head. ‘You’re right. Kathy said exactly the same.’

‘If you believe Alex was murdered, then who do you suspect?’

‘I don’t know. The problem is that the motive is unclear. It might have been blackmail, or sexual jealousy. Or perhaps it was an accident in which others were involved who would prefer to keep their names out of it. I find it hard to come to grips with Petrou. He seems to have been so many different things to different people.’

She nodded, thinking back. ‘I suppose that’s true. He had a surface charm, which he could adapt to the people that he came into contact with. There was a certain intimacy almost immediately you met him; he seemed soft, yielding. But I always felt that underneath he was quite hard, that he had a very strong sense of self-preservation and self-interest.’

‘He was manipulative, then.’

‘Yes, I think he was.’ She looked hard at Brock, who was nursing his breaking-and-entering tools. ‘I’m sorry I flew off the handle at you earlier. I thought you were being manipulative.’

‘Well, I suppose I was. Until I got to know you, anyway.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Right now? Well, if the coast is clear, go back to my room, I suppose.’

‘You’re going to smash another door in?’ He smiled, shrugged.

‘Maybe it was fate, David, that you broke into this room. Maybe it was even intentional — subconsciously, I mean.’

He reddened.

‘Alternatively,’ she said, ‘you could just stay here and in the morning I’ll tell Jay that I’ve locked myself out again and she’ll lend me the master key — she does it all the time for the patients.’

Brock looked at the chair by the desk. It seemed the only possibility, but he’d already found from the one in his own room that he was too big for it. ‘Well …’ He sounded doubtful.

‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. She wriggled over in the narrow bed to make room for him, and then reached up to turn off the light.

‘You are real, then.’ He opened his eyes at the sound of her voice and saw her gazing at him. A weak silver light leaked in around the curtain, and the hot water gurgled in the old cast-iron radiator under the window.

‘Yes.’ He felt their bodies pressed together in the narrow bed. ‘I’m real, and a bit… surprised.’

‘Don’t you do this much, then?’ She smiled at him, and he thought how very nice a smile it was, and how much poorer the world was going to be without it. He kissed her cheek and stretched as much as he could in the confined space. ‘I just didn’t expect to find myself waking up here with you. I’m very glad I have, though.’

‘In half an hour I’ll go downstairs and get someone to give me the key. But not yet.’ She slid her hand across his chest and gave him a squeeze.

‘No,’ he agreed, and eased his arm under her shoulders. For the first time he noticed that his automatic wince was unnecessary, for there was no pain from his shoulder.

‘You think Stephen Beamish-Newell killed Alex, don’t you?’ she asked.

He hesitated. ‘I have no real reason to. I think Kathy does.’

‘I can understand that. He can seem intimidating, even terrifying, I suppose. But he would have the most to lose if someone was murdered at the clinic’

‘And perhaps the most to lose from someone who was threatening the reputation of the clinic in some way. You like him, don’t you?’

‘It’s not liking. More trusting. I just don’t believe he would do it.’

‘How about his wife?’

‘Laura?’ Grace looked at him in surprise, then frowned. ‘Of course not! How do they train you to think like this?’

‘It comes from having to punish people all the time, I suppose.’

‘I’m sorry I said that, David. It must be very hard, doing what you do. Not allowed to forgive anyone.’

‘That’s what makes it bearable, Grace. It would be too difficult to have to forgive as well. Someone else gets that job.’

A wood pigeon had settled on their window-sill and began cooing reassuringly. Then a blast of the gusting north-easterly wind sent it fluttering away out of earshot.

An hour later Grace returned from her visit downstairs. ‘Jay doesn’t come in on a Sunday, but the girl who opens the office for her gave me the key. She didn’t seem to know about any goings-on last night.’

‘There’s no way they couldn’t have heard me. And I left the computer on. Still, it doesn’t sound as if they called the police. Not yet, anyway.’

‘What have you got planned today?’

‘Not a lot. I’m supposed to be writing a paper for a conference …’ Brock’s voice trailed away. Talking with her about anything happening in the future was so difficult. He thought how much he would have liked to take her to Italy.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘It’s not important. Not in the least. What about you?’

‘Can I spend time with you, David? It doesn’t matter, if you feel awkward about it.’

‘Of course I don’t feel awkward. I’d like that.’

‘It isn’t that I don’t love my husband. But this …’ She gestured hopelessly round the bare little room.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It isn’t Paris in the springtime, but it’s a comfort. It’s a comfort for me too, Grace, believe me.’

She moved up against him. ‘I arranged to meet Rose this afternoon,’ she said. ‘If you like, I’ll try to persuade her to talk to you.’

They went for a walk in the grounds after lunch and looked in the library when they returned, to see if they could retrieve Brock’s gift to her, but it was gone.

Grace went off to keep her appointment with Rose. ‘She says she will talk to you, David,’ she reported back later. ‘I gather it has something to do with her fiance, Geoffrey Parsons. Apparently, there’s something he kept from the police, and he’s been worrying a lot about it. He doesn’t want Rose to speak to anyone, but she feels he’s going to have a breakdown if he doesn’t do something. She’s tried getting him to speak to Stephen Beamish-Newell, but he says there’s no one he can talk to.’

‘Does she have any idea what it is that he’s hiding?’

‘I’m not sure if she knows or just suspects. It’s strange — sometimes she sounds very protective and concerned about him, and the next minute she becomes quite aggrieved and annoyed. I got the feeling that their relationship hasn’t been very happy lately, almost as if she’s only keeping it going because he’s dependent on her.’

‘It’s funny you should say that. I got a lecture from Laura Beamish-Newell yesterday about harassing her staff. Apart from Rose, she said I’d been belligerent towards Parsons, who’d told her about the time he approached you while we were out there in the snow. He claimed I almost attacked him.’

‘You were very protective.’ She smiled at him. ‘I thought that was sweet.’

‘Well, the thing that surprised me was how protective Laura was towards Parsons. More so than towards Rose. It almost made me wonder if there could be something going on between them.’

‘What? Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sure there isn’t. She’s probably just noticed that he’s been under a strain lately. I really do think she worries about people she feels responsible for, David.’

‘Maybe. When can I see Rose?’

‘She says that’s difficult. Laura has been questioning her about you, and she thinks Laura has asked the other girls in the house to keep an eye on her. She says she’ll be seeing you anyway tomorrow afternoon for acupuncture, and she’ll talk to you then.’

‘Oh no,’ Brock groaned.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Acupuncture. I don’t know what it is about it. I passed out in the first session I had.’ ‘You didn’t? Really?’

‘Yes. I don’t know why. I barely made it through the second one. I’ve been feeling a bit groggy anyway for the last couple of days. I’d say I was going down with flu, except for what that patient said to Beamish-Newell the first night I was here, about feeling much worse after a week than when she arrived. He said it was to be expected.’

She looked at him with concern. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been selfish. You should be resting this weekend.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he said.