COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Emma Page 1996

Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008171841

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008171858

Version [2016-02-18]

DEDICATION

For M. H.

in unceasing admiration

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Author

By Emma Page

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

The thriving, bustling town of Millbourne looked its best on this sunny Tuesday afternoon in the third week of April. In his first-floor office overlooking the main street, Donald Fielding closed the file on which he had been working. He stood up from his desk and returned the file to its cabinet. He was a tall, lean man, thirty-seven years old, with thick, dark hair and sharp grey eyes. He was the proprietor of the Millbourne Advertiser, a highly successful freesheet, one of a number of such newspapers he owned in this part of the county.

He glanced at the phone, looked at his watch, expelled an impatient breath and crossed to the window. The top sash stood open to the soft air, laced with traffic fumes and the scents of spring.

After a few moments he turned from the window and went back to his desk; he began to work again. All his movements were quick and decisive. He glanced frequently at his watch. Whenever the phone rang he snatched up the receiver on the instant.

It was almost four when the call he had been waiting for, the call from George Gresham, head of Gresham Enterprises, at last came through.

Fielding sat leaning forward, rigid, listening, then his expression began to lighten, his shoulders relaxed. By the end of the call he was smiling broadly.

His tone was now briskly cheerful. ‘Right, then. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll be there.’

He drew a deep breath of relief. He felt exuberant, charged with energy. He had the look of a man long resigned to old hindrances and restrictions, who sees all at once exciting challenges opening out before him.

Then his expression altered. Before those new opportunities could be grasped an existing association must be ended. He was foolish to have let it continue so long when it was plain weeks ago that the time had come to cut loose.

He rested an elbow on the desk, cupped his chin in his hand. He remained for some time frowning, pondering, calculating.

Wednesday dawned chilly and overcast but by lunch time the sun had broken through.

In the walled garden of Honeysuckle Cottage, in a secluded spot three miles from Millbourne, Audrey Tysoe spent the afternoon as she had spent many other afternoons since her retirement a few months ago at the age of fifty-five: working in her garden.

The cottage stood on its own at the end of a lane, some distance from the nearest village but within easy walking distance of a bus route into town. The garden was a fair size but she managed it herself.

Today she was busy clearing a tangled corner; the wheelbarrow beside her was now full. She wheeled it across the garden and emptied it onto the compost heap.

She was a dumpy woman, strongly built, with a slight, habitual limp. A shrewd, weathered face that no one had ever thought pretty; hair taken back without artifice into a scanty bun. Neat and tidy, even in her old gardening clothes; the air of a woman who has never bothered overmuch about her appearance and certainly doesn’t intend to start bothering about it at this stage of her life.

As she turned from the compost heap she heard the sound of a car in the lane. She glanced at her watch: just after 5.30. She gave a little nod. It would be Donald Fielding; he had phoned to say he intended coming. She had worked for Fielding until her retirement.

She heard the vehicle turn in through the gateway. By the time she had walked round to the front of the house Fielding was getting out of his car in the parking bay at the side of the drive.

He raised a hand and called out a greeting. He came up to her and put an arm round her shoulders, kissed her affectionately on the cheek. They sat down close together on a garden seat and were soon deep in earnest conversation. They had just about reached a satisfactory conclusion when there came the sound of another car approaching.

Julie Dawson came along the lane in her white Mini. As she turned into the driveway she saw Fielding’s car parked in the bay.

She drew a trembling breath, hesitated, then drove slowly round to the garage at the rear of the cottage, flicking a glance as she went by at the pair sitting side by side on the garden seat. They both looked across at her but neither waved, neither smiled. She felt a nervous tremor run through her.

She sat for a moment in the car, steadying herself, then she picked up her holdall and shoulder bag. Before she came into view again she squared her shoulders and assumed a confident smile. She was slightly built, twenty years old, with a pretty, heart-shaped face, sharp little features, a satiny skin. Hazel eyes, very bright, flecked with gold. A wealth of curling brown hair, full of russet lights.

She walked jauntily towards the other two, chattering cheerfully as she approached. ‘It wasn’t so terrible, after all. Just one filling, no injection. I could hardly feel it.’ She worked at the Advertiser and had been allowed to leave early to keep a dental appointment. ‘I went shopping afterwards, I felt I deserved a treat. I bought myself a jacket.’

She halted, reached into her holdall and drew the jacket from its wrappings. ‘It was marked down quite a bit. It seems a terrific bargain to me. I can’t see anything wrong with it.’

She held it up against her. An expensive-looking garment, fashionably cut; fine, smooth cloth in a muted grey-green check. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked. ‘Do you think it suits me? It goes with all my things.’

Neither of the other two responded to any of this with so much as a smile or a glance at the jacket. Fielding got to his feet and Julie’s stream of chatter fell away.

‘We need to talk,’ Fielding told her brusquely. ‘We’ll go inside.’ Without another word or look he went into the house.

Julie stood irresolute. She turned her head as if about to make a run for it, then she gave her shoulders a little shake and followed him with an air of compliant meekness.

But the look in her eyes as she stepped across the threshold was far from compliant.

Audrey sat gazing after them with an expressionless face, then she stood up and went limping over to a bed of daffodils. Here and there she nipped off a faded bloom, to be cast down later onto the compost heap.

CHAPTER 2

Rain began to fall early on Friday morning, dying away by eleven. It was almost noon as Detective Sergeant Lambert drove back to Cannonbridge. His inquiries had taken him to a couple of outlying villages where he had spent a fruitless morning chasing shadows. He felt tired and irritable, hungry and thirsty.

The sun shone down from a clearing sky. His route took him along minor roads little more than lanes, between flowering hedgerows, grassy banks starred with primroses, past orchards of pear trees snowy with blossom. His sour mood began to evaporate.

When he was still some half-dozen miles from Cannonbridge he rounded a bend and saw on the grass verge, a short distance ahead, a white Mini, standing sideways on to him, its back wheels sunk in the ditch. As he came up it became clear that the rear bumper had got itself hooked under a boulder, one of several strewn along the verge, which had fallen from the crumbling stone wall backing the ditch.

A girl crouched beside the vehicle, trying to free the bumper. She got to her feet as Lambert pulled up close by. He ran an appreciative eye over her. A pretty girl with strikingly beautiful brown hair glinting in the sunlight. She was trimly dressed in a dark green skirt, a smartly cut jacket in a muted grey-green check.

She was delighted at his offer of help. ‘I overshot the turning,’ she explained. ‘I was reversing and I skidded back into the ditch.’ She gestured over to the right. ‘I’m going to Calcott House.’ She saw the name meant nothing to him. ‘It’s a hotel,’ she added. ‘Quite near here.’

He got her to move aside the stone as he eased up the rear of the car. The end of the bumper was twisted and dented. ‘It’s no great damage,’ he assured her. ‘It won’t cost a fortune to put right.’ She thanked him profusely for his assistance.

‘This hotel you’re going to,’ he said. ‘Do they serve lunch to nonresidents?’ The notion of a decent meal in civilized surroundings appeared distinctly cheering. Particularly with the chance of a pretty girl to share his table.

‘I think they do,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t stayed there before. I used to live round here, in Calcott village, but I left three years ago. This is the first time I’ve been back – I’ve no family here any more. Calcott House used to be just a residential hotel but there were changes a few years ago; they did a lot to the place. I think maybe it changed hands at that time but I can’t quite remember. Anyway, they started doing bed and breakfast, catering for holiday-makers. I’m pretty certain they began doing meals for nonresidents at the same time.’ She gave him a friendly smile. ‘I’m sure they’ll give you lunch.’

He followed her Mini till they came in sight of tall wroughtiron gates standing open to a long drive flanked by flowering shrubs, running up to a large Victorian house framed by mature trees. A board by the gate assured him the hotel did indeed serve lunch and dinner to nonresidents.

In the car park the girl suggested it was time they exchanged names; hers was Julie Dawson. She wore an air of pleased expectancy as they walked across to the pillared entrance. ‘I always longed to come here when I was a child,’ she confided. ‘It seemed a mysterious, romantic place. But I never even set foot in the grounds. I used to make up stories about it. I used to tell myself: “One day, when I’m grown up, I’ll go and stay there.” I imagined that would be about as far as anyone could get in the high life.’

She gave him a grin, like an excited child. ‘Now here I am, walking in through the doors. I decided to come this weekend on the spur of the moment. I rang up and found they could take me. I was delighted.’

He waited for her in the lounge bar while she checked in. When she rejoined him he asked what she would like to drink.

She looked at his glass. ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

Nonalcoholic lager, he told her. She shot him a surprised, amused glance. ‘I still have to drive,’ he pointed out. ‘Unlike you.’ After a moment’s hesitation he added, ‘I’m a policeman. I’m on my way back to the station in Cannonbridge.’ He waited for the friendly expression to vanish from her face, for a look of cool wariness to succeed it.

But she leaned forward with an air of eager interest. She ran her eye over his dark suit, his white shirt. ‘Are you by any chance a detective?’ she asked. He admitted that he was. ‘I’m a detective sergeant, to be precise.’

She clapped her hands and gave him a gleeful smile. ‘How marvellous! I’ve never met a real-life detective before – I’ve never met any kind of policeman on a social level. I’ve always loved reading detective novels.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not always like it is in the books.’ He changed the subject without subtlety; he had no intention of spending the next hour talking about his job.

When she had finished her drink she suggested an inspection of the garden; there was plenty of time before lunch. They went out into the bright sunshine. The grounds were of considerable size and had clearly been laid out with much care at the time the house was built. They strolled past lawns, shrubberies, rockeries in full springtime splendour of pink and mauve, yellow and white. A dolphin fountain jetted cascades of diamond drops into the sparkling air; purple irises bloomed beside a pool. They followed a woodland walk through dappled green shade under an arching canopy of branches. The ground was carpeted with bluebells, forget-me-nots, violets, anemones. A relaxing air of peace and tranquillity brooded over the whole.

They wandered back towards the house and came upon a series of small individual gardens enclosed by formal hedges of clipped evergreens, each garden designed round a different theme. One had been entirely devoted to aromatic foliage plants in shades of silvery grey. Julie asked Lambert if he knew what the plants were. He had to admit he didn’t.

On a stone bench a few feet away a woman sat leaning back with her eyes closed. Beside her on the seat lay a folded newspaper and a spectacles case. At the sound of their voices she opened her eyes and sat up. She looked across at them and after a moment got to her feet and came over. A stocky woman, mid-fifties, with a vigorous appearance. Blunt features; short, iron-grey hair taken to one side and secured with a plain brown slide. No make-up; a scrubbed, clinically clean look. She wore a dark grey, chalk-striped suit tailored on lines of uncompromising severity.

With the briefest preamble of an apology for breaking in on them she began to identify the various plants for Julie, who listened with appreciative interest. A lonely woman, Lambert judged, snatching at any chance of conversation. As she gestured at the plants he saw that her stubby hands were bare of rings.

The stream of information flowed on unabated, and Julie began to exhibit signs of restlessness. She flicked a speaking glance at Lambert and started to walk away from the woman – still unflaggingly voluble – towards an archway cut through the hedge. Lambert fell in behind her. Undeterred, the woman went with them, continuing to hold forth about the garden and the grounds in general.

The three of them reached an open stretch of sward set at intervals with fine specimen trees in full flaunt of blossom. Some yards away a man, young and powerfully built, knelt with his back to them, working on a border. ‘That’s Luke Marchant,’ the woman said. ‘He does all the gardening here.’ She saw that Lambert didn’t recognize the name. ‘The hotel belongs to the Marchants,’ she explained. ‘Evan Marchant and his wife, they own and run it. Luke Marchant is Evan’s brother, he’s a lot younger than Evan. He’s done a wonderful job since he came here. It’s all he thinks about, the garden. He works all the hours God sends.’

Julie looked intrigued. She moved away from the other two, over to where Luke knelt, absorbed in his work. Lambert saw that she was attempting to engage him in conversation about what he was doing, her manner easy and affable.

‘She won’t get much change out of Luke,’ the woman beside Lambert observed in a sardonic tone. And from this distance it certainly appeared that Luke’s response was confined to a nod or shake of the head.

‘You really must take a look at the water garden,’ the woman advised Lambert. ‘“Water canal”, I gather, is the correct term for it.’ She indicated where it was. ‘It’s well worth seeing. Luke cleaned it out himself. He dredged it, repaired the stone and brickwork, a real labour of love. I’d come with you myself but it’s damp underfoot down there and I’m wearing a new pair of shoes.’ She gave a little laugh, glancing down at her shoes with pride, sticking out one foot for Lambert to admire. ‘I only bought them this morning. I couldn’t resist putting them on right away. I know they’re walking shoes but I’d rather not get them wet the first time I wear them.’

‘Very nice,’ Lambert remarked politely. Her feet were short and broad, the ankles thick and shapeless. The shoes, a laced pair made of stout leather in a shade of oxblood, looked as if they could withstand any amount of water and hard usage.

She wriggled her foot with satisfaction. ‘I never believe in skimping on shoes. If there’s one thing I learned early on in my working life, it’s to take good care of your feet, then they’ll never let you down.’

Julie came back and Lambert took her off to see the water garden. The woman returned to her seat on the stone bench.

Left to himself again, Luke Marchant sat back on his heels, his hands idle. He turned his head and gazed fixedly after the departing figure of the girl, her beautiful brown hair gleaming in the sunshine.

CHAPTER 3

Lambert’s watch showed five minutes to one as he and Julie made their way back towards the hotel. Lambert was by now ravenous.

A woman came along a nearby path, progressing gracefully in the same direction with the aid of an elegant walking stick. Not far off seventy, Lambert judged. She was chattering to a small pug-nosed dog, a black-and-tan King Charles spaniel, trotting docilely beside her at the end of a lead. From time to time the dog uttered a little bark by way of reply, tilting its head to look up at her.

The woman smiled in friendly fashion and spoke a word of greeting to Lambert and Julie. An aura of expensive French perfume drifted to Lambert’s nostrils as she went by. She was a lady of generous proportions, with the remains of great prettiness. Very well groomed, carefully made up; immaculately dressed hair of a subtle shade of ash blonde. She wore a light, flowery, floaty gown – the word ‘dress’ seemed too mundane for such an airy creation; it looked as if it had cost a great deal of money.

A long-term resident of the hotel, Lambert guessed; she had a relaxed air, as of someone very much at home in her surroundings. She came into the dining room – without her spaniel – a few minutes after Lambert and Julie had been shown to a table. She made a regal progress across the room, dropping a word here, a nod or smile there, till she reached her small table laid with a single place, not far from Julie and Lambert. Her name, Lambert gathered from exchanges during a stop she had made close by, was Mrs Passmore.

Julie made her choice after briefly scanning the menu but Lambert, in spite of his hunger, took somewhat longer to decide. He eventually settled on salmon but even then found himself torn between salmon mayonnaise and poached salmon with hollandaise sauce. The waitress, a cheerful woman with bleached hair and bright red lipstick – ‘Call me Iris, everybody does’ – guaranteed both dishes to be delicious. The chef was first class, she assured them, a young Frenchman who had been at the hotel a couple of years.

As Lambert finally opted for the mayonnaise the talkative grey-haired woman in the chalk-striped suit came into the dining room and took her seat alone at a table some distance away. She gave the two of them an acknowledging nod in passing.

‘I see you’ve met our Miss Hammond,’ Iris observed.

‘A very knowledgeable lady,’ Lambert remarked. ‘About plants, at any rate.’

Iris smiled. ‘That’s a recent craze with her. She’s bought herself a cottage out at the back of beyond; she’s moving there very soon. It’s nothing but gardening now all day long. Gardening books from the library, gardening programmes on the television and radio, gardening pages in newspapers and magazines. Six months ago I don’t suppose she could tell a daisy from a dandelion. But I’m pleased for her, she needed a new interest. She used to be a nurse – private, not hospital. She’s retired now.’

Iris suddenly became aware of the presence of a man and woman who had appeared in the doorway of the dining room and now stood murmuring to each other, their eyes everywhere, raking the tables, the guests, the food, the service, with practised speed. ‘The Marchants,’ Iris said in a low voice. ‘I’d better be off or I’ll be in trouble.’ She vanished towards the kitchen.

The pair in the doorway stood murmuring together a few moments longer. Evan Marchant was a dapper man in his mid-thirties, impeccably groomed, conventionally dressed. Sleek black hair, slicked back; dark eyes, alert and calculating. He looked poised and self-contained, very much in control; a man never likely to be taken by surprise.

Lambert put Mrs Marchant at a good ten years older than her husband. A little pouter pigeon of a woman with bright, darting eyes, hair elaborately dressed in a lofty style designed to add inches to her height; it was tinted an unflattering shade midway between dead leaves and Oxford marmalade.

Mrs Marchant left the dining room and her husband began a ritual tour of the tables. He leaned forward slightly as he progressed, gliding rather than walking, his hands lightly clasped before him. Lambert half expected to hear the strains of the ‘Skaters’ Waltz’ burst forth at any moment from an orchestra secreted behind the scenes.

Marchant paused at every table. His face wore an urbane, professional smile. When he reached Lambert’s table he inclined his head at Julie. He had already welcomed her to Calcott House when she checked in. ‘I hope everything is satisfactory?’ He had an unctuous voice. She assured him that it was. He inclined his head at Lambert. ‘We shall hope you’ll find yourself able to come and stay with us at some future date.’

Iris approached with the food and Marchant took a couple of paces back. He stood watching for a moment as she deftly served it, then he inclined his head again and resumed his circuit of the room.

The food was as delicious as Iris had promised. Julie chatted in an entertaining fashion, scarcely ever, Lambert noticed, saying anything very personal about herself. He managed to gather that she was living on the outskirts of Millbourne, she had a job in the town, and that was about all. He asked about her job but she made a face, implying it was of little interest. ‘Is it so dull?’ he pursued. But she would only say: ‘It’s certainly not what anyone could call exciting. I’ll be back at work on Monday morning. I’d just as soon forget the job till then.’ He asked no more personal questions.

When Iris brought the coffee Julie said to her: ‘I wouldn’t at all mind coming back here for a longer break, say a week or two, quite soon. Do you think that would be possible?’

‘I think you’d be all right,’ Iris told her. ‘It’s still pretty early in the season. It would be a different story if it was July or August. And two of the residents are leaving soon. Miss Hammond’s off to her cottage in the next week or two and Mrs Passmore’s going to join an old friend who’s been widowed – they’re going to try sharing her house together, to see if it works out. I should think it would, Mrs Passmore’s easy to get along with.’

She caught Lambert’s quick glance at the nearby table where Mrs Passmore sat over her coffee and liqueur, selecting a chocolate from an expensive-looking box in front of her. ‘You needn’t worry,’ Iris assured him. ‘She won’t hear us talking about her. She’s pretty deaf, though she’d never admit it. You have to face her straight on and talk quite loudly if you want her to hear. She’ll have to come round to wearing a hearing aid sooner or later but she’s putting it off as long as possible.’ She grinned. ‘You’d think folk would have got beyond vanity at her age but it seems they don’t. Take that hair of hers. Looks well, doesn’t it? That’s a wig. Funnily enough, she doesn’t make any secret of that. Wigs are quite a hobby of hers, she has half a dozen in different styles and colours, they cost a fortune.’ She turned to go. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’ll be all right,’ she added to Julie. ‘Give them a ring as soon as you’ve settled on a date. I’m sure they’ll be able to fit you in.’

As they were finishing their coffee Lambert saw Miss Hammond push back her chair and walk across to Mrs Passmore’s table. Mrs Passmore looked up at her, watching her lips; Miss Hammond spoke slowly and clearly. ‘I’m going over to the cottage this afternoon; I’m leaving in a few minutes. I wondered if you’d like to come with me and take a look round, see what you think of it. I’m sure you’d find it interesting and you may have some ideas about improvements.’ Her voice took on a cajoling tone. ‘It’s a beautiful afternoon. I’ll be sure to bring you back here in time for tea.’

‘It’s very kind of you, Olive.’ Mrs Passmore’s voice already held a refusal and Miss Hammond’s face drooped. ‘But I’m playing bridge this afternoon, I’m being collected at half past two.’ She didn’t offer Miss Hammond a chocolate. ‘Some other time, perhaps,’ she added in a tone that didn’t promise much. She picked up her coffee cup and drank from it in a manner that spoke unmistakably of dismissal.

Miss Hammond gave a resigned nod. She wore a faintly dejected look as she left the dining room. ‘Poor dear,’ Julie said lightly. ‘She didn’t even get to show Mrs Passmore her new shoes.’

Lambert looked at his watch. ‘Time I was moving.’ As they came out into the hall he said, ‘I enjoyed our lunch. I hope you have a pleasant weekend.’

Julie smiled. ‘It was very kind of you to help me with the car.’ She slid him a beseeching little look, open, unguarded. ‘Will I be seeing you again?’

For a moment he was tempted; for a moment he felt himself a green lad again, her own age. But common sense at once brushed aside the thought. Whatever he was currently in the market for, it very definitely wasn’t for naive, immature young girls, however winning their ways, however pretty their clouds of hair.

By way of reply he made a noncommittal sound. He consulted his watch again with deliberate openness and gave her an impersonal smile that very distinctly said goodbye.

Her beseeching look fell away. She smiled brightly back at him, raised a hand in a departing wave and turned to go upstairs to her room.

She had got the message.

Lambert came down the hotel steps and set off for the car park. A short distance in front of him he saw the stocky, chalk-striped figure of Miss Olive Hammond, walking briskly in the same direction.

Miss Hammond’s car, a Volkswagen Beetle, was parked a few yards from his. ‘A glorious afternoon,’ she called across as he halted to fish in his pockets for his keys. She looked pleased to see him. ‘I’m making the most of this weather; I’m going to do some gardening at the cottage I’ve bought.’

She suddenly walked swiftly over to Lambert’s car and positioned herself strategically in front of the driver’s door. ‘I’m moving into the cottage very soon,’ she continued in a rush. ‘I’ve been going over there, making a start on the garden. It’s quite a wilderness, the place has been empty for years.’

Lambert had by now found his keys. He went up to his car but Miss Hammond showed no sign of budging. She went rattling on. ‘It’s an old cottage, Victorian. It was modernized – after a fashion – back in the year dot. A lot of people would be put off by the state it’s in but I know it will be very attractive when I’ve finished with it. I’m looking forward to it all tremendously. I’ve never owned a property before.’

‘I’ve never owned one at all,’ Lambert said.

‘I’m going to see about plans for an extension. Then there’ll be all the repairs and improvements, it’s going to be very exciting.’ She pulled a face. ‘You’d be astonished at how much it’s all going to cost. I know I was. It’s only when you actually get down to it that you realize what prices are these days.’

Lambert mustered his patience as best he could. ‘I dare say you can get it added on to your mortgage,’ he suggested.

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Mortgages are not for me. I wouldn’t want to be saddled with one at my time of life. Cash on the nail, that’s the only thing at my age. I won’t be taking a holiday this year, I’m devoting all my time to the place.’ She jerked her head. ‘I’ve started going to salerooms and auctions. I’ve bought a few odds and ends, just the bare minimum to start with. I’ve got them in store, ready to move in. I want to get old furniture as far as I can – not real antiques, of course, they cost the earth, but you’d be surprised what nice little cottagey pieces you can still pick up cheap. I’ve been reading up about old houses, old furniture, the different styles and periods.’ She grinned. ‘They’re getting to know me at the public library.’

Lambert tossed his keys into the air and caught them again. Olive ignored the hint. ‘Are you fond of gardening?’ she asked.

He tossed the keys again. ‘I can take it or leave it.’

‘I’ve had a look round the garden centres and shops but the plants and shrubs cost a small fortune. But I’ve thought of a way of getting round that.’ She made a pleased little face. ‘I intend cadging cuttings and plants from Luke Marchant. I can slip him a few bob – much cheaper than buying them.’ She raised a cautionary finger. ‘Mum’s the word, of course. No need for His Nibs to know anything about it.’

Lambert’s patience came suddenly to an end. ‘I must be getting along,’ he told her brusquely.

Still she stood immovable. ‘I’m going to be all alone at the cottage after I move in. It’ll be quite a change, after living in a hotel for the last four years.’ She looked up at him. ‘It’s going to feel very strange.’

‘You should get yourself a pet. A dog. Or a cat. Very good company.’

She shook her head at once. ‘They’d take too much looking after.’

‘A bird, then.’

‘A bird,’ she echoed on a note of lively interest.

‘Get a budgie,’ he suggested. ‘Teach it to talk.’

She smiled. ‘I might just do that.’

He took a step forward. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ He gestured at the car door. ‘I really must be off.’

She moved reluctantly aside. As soon as he had got in and closed the door she stooped and rapped on the window. He wound it partway down. She seized hold of the top of the glass and stuck her face in at the opening. ‘You’ll have to come over and see the cottage. You and your young lady.’

Lambert switched on the engine. ‘She’s not my young lady. I just happened to come across her today. I won’t be seeing her again.’

‘Then come by yourself. Any time you’re in the neighbourhood, do call in. The cottage isn’t on the phone yet but no matter about that, you can just drop in, take me as you find me. I can give you a cup of tea – something stronger, if you like. I can always rustle you up a meal.’

‘Very kind of you.’ He managed a smile of sorts. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

She began to rattle out hasty directions for finding the cottage. He made to start winding the window up again and she was forced to withdraw. She was still calling after him as he pulled out without further ceremony. He was off and away, down the drive, out through the gates, heading for Cannonbridge.

All at once the day took on a totally different complexion. In no time at all he would find himself giving the chief inspector an account of his wasted morning. Not a prospect he relished.

Before he had put a couple of miles behind him all thought of Olive Hammond and her cottage had gone from his mind.

CHAPTER 4

The cuckoo had barely uttered his first hollow notes when the spring weather turned abruptly fickle, with gusts of rain, showers of sleet and hail, followed by a succession of grey, damp days, giving way all at once to another spell of cloudless skies and warm breezes. Horse chestnuts blossomed white and pink along the avenues, lilac and laburnum bloomed in suburban gardens, hanging baskets of lobelia and trailing geranium sprouted from lampposts; floral clocks appeared in municipal flowerbeds.

Bank holidays, agricultural shows, festivals and carnivals. Children danced round maypoles. Grown men dressed up as Cavaliers and Roundheads and fought pitched battles over stretches of harmless countryside. The cuckoo was in full voice.

In the DIY stores staff worked overtime. Gallons of paint, acres of wallpaper, were loaded into the boots of cars. Householders erected scaffolding and climbed up ladders.

Sergeant Lambert’s landlady was afflicted, as every year, by her own variety of spring fever. With her it took the form of prodigious exertions in the garden, a sustained attack upon the contents of cupboards and drawers: sorting, discarding, cramming into cardboard boxes to be piled outside the back door and borne off by the dustmen.

At the end of May a nasty virus made its stealthy appearance, insinuating its way into the country from abroad by means of the aeroplane, cutting a swathe through the population and certainly not minded to spare the main Cannonbridge police station.

Sergeant Lambert endured an attack of average ferocity but Detective Chief Inspector Kelsey was very unwell indeed. He struggled back to work earlier than he should, unable to endure any longer the tedium of an invalid existence alone in his flat – he had lived on his own since his divorce years ago.

He dragged himself up the station steps. A big, solidly built man with craggy features, green eyes normally bright and sharp but heavy now and lacklustre; a head of thick, carroty hair, devoid today of its usual shine and spring.

Outside the windows the season swept joyfully on but the Chief knew none of it, huddled glumly in his office, wheezing, reeking of liniment, sucking lozenges powerfully fragrant with menthol and eucalyptus.

One morning in the middle of June Sergeant Lambert ventured to suggest to the Chief that what he needed was a holiday. The sergeant was still not in top form himself. He had already booked his own holiday for September – he was going to Greece with friends – but he had a couple of weeks in hand. If the Chief decided to take himself off for a break, Lambert wouldn’t at all mind fixing himself some leave at the same time, very convenient all round. He could go and stay with his sister and her family in Sussex or with married friends in Wales.

The Chief didn’t bother to give him any kind of rational reply, he merely dismissed the notion with a shake of his head. He had so far made no plans for any leave; he was never attracted by the vision of long days of leisure; holidays always served to emphasize his aloneness.

A day or two went by and still the Chief felt no better. What I need is a really good, strong tonic, he decided. Something stronger than he could buy over the counter. He went reluctantly back to the doctor who came up with precisely the same remedy that Sergeant Lambert had proposed: ‘What you need is a holiday.’

The Chief shook his head stubbornly. ‘All I need is something to make me feel a bit livelier.’

But the doctor could be equally stubborn. ‘I am giving you something,’ he countered. ‘I’m giving you sound advice. Instructions, if that makes it any easier for you to swallow. Take a holiday. Now.’

As he closed the door behind him, Kelsey shook his head slowly and with determination. On his way back to the station he went into a health-food shop and bought himself a large bottle of a fiendishly expensive herbal elixir, brewed in the back yard of some monastery in the Balkans. The moment he got back into his car he took a long swig from the bottle. He immediately felt so hideously unwell that he knew beyond doubt it must be doing him good.

He said nothing of all this to Sergeant Lambert.

On June 21st the Chief awoke in a sourly irritable frame of mind. He felt no better. If he must be honest, he felt worse.

Sergeant Lambert greeted him at the office with a reminder that it was the first day of summer, a remark that did nothing to lift the Chief’s spirits. He tackled without enthusiasm the pile of mail awaiting him.

Before long he came upon a letter written in a slow, shaking hand. It was from a Mr Eardlow, with an address in a hamlet a few miles from Cannonbridge.

Eardlow apologized for writing instead of coming over to the police station in person, but his circumstances made a visit difficult. He and his wife were advanced in years and suffered from various health problems. They no longer owned a car and public transport in the area was very limited.

They were worried about a young relative. They had been trying to get in touch with her for some time but hadn’t been able to make any contact, nor, indeed, to discover her present whereabouts. They would be most grateful if an officer could call on them; they would supply him with full details.

Kelsey sighed and shook his head. Eardlow hadn’t even given the name of the missing relative. No doubt it was another case of an inconsiderate, harebrained youngster taking it into her head to abscond temporarily for the most trifling of reasons, sometimes for no reason at all, never giving a thought to the anxieties of family and friends.

He tossed the letter across to Sergeant Lambert. ‘Better get over there and have a word with these folk,’ he instructed. ‘I doubt if there’s anything in it.’

In the afternoon Sergeant Lambert drove over to the hamlet, having first phoned the Eardlows to fix a time. They were nervously awaiting him in the spotlessly clean parlour of their little cottage. The furniture gleamed, the brass shone. A table was set with an elaborate lace cloth and what were undoubtedly their best china cups.

Mrs Eardlow had the kettle already on and she brewed the tea right away. She moved slowly and with difficulty. Her husband walked with the aid of a stick, his hands were swollen and knobbed. In Lambert’s estimation neither of them would see eighty again. He felt a pang at the thought of all the painful domestic activity on the part of this frail old couple that must have taken place in the little dwelling after his phone call.

He didn’t ask questions to start with, he didn’t press them in any way. Over an excellent tea they began to relax. They stopped treating him as if he were minor visiting royalty and began to unload their worries.

The missing relative was a girl of twenty. As soon as they told him her name, Julie Dawson, bells began to ring in Lambert’s brain. By the time they added her address, Honeysuckle Cottage, near Millbourne, he was almost certain. He asked if he might see a photograph.

They couldn’t produce anything very recent but showed him some snapshots taken during Julie’s last visit two years ago. Lambert looked down at the pretty face, the impish smile, the beautiful hair.

‘I’ve met this girl,’ he told them. They looked startled. He gave them a brief sketch of his encounter with Julie by the roadside near Calcott House. After a burst of astonishment the Eardlows took up their story again.

It seemed that Julie was an only child, born late in her parents’ marriage. Her father – fifteen years older than her mother – had been a first cousin of Mrs Eardlow. Both Julie’s parents were now dead and the Eardlows were her only living relatives. Julie worked for the Millbourne Advertiser as a telephone sales clerk; she had been there three years.

During her first year in Millbourne she had visited the Eardlows two or three times. Two years ago she had moved into lodgings at Honeysuckle Cottage. Since then she had written a few lines occasionally and had sent cards at Christmas and on their birthdays, but she had never once visited them.

They had replied without fail to her letters and cards, giving her their bits of news, repeating the invitation to come for a visit, a weekend, or a longer holiday. They had always been fond of Julie, had always been on good terms with her and her parents. As far as they knew, Julie was happy in her job, had settled down well at Honeysuckle Cottage, liked her landlady, a Miss Audrey Tysoe.

The Eardlows had celebrated their golden wedding in the first week of June. Julie had long known about the planned gathering of friends. She had definitely told them she would be there. Not only would she attend the party but she would stay with them for a night or two. This had been settled months ago and had been referred to on both sides more than once since then.

‘We were very disappointed when she didn’t come.’ Mrs Eardlow looked on the verge of tears. ‘Very surprised, too. She didn’t even write or phone.’ They had thought at first that the date had somehow slipped her mind, but she would remember after a day or two and they would hear from her.

But the days went by and they didn’t hear. They began to wonder if she was ill, or had met with some accident. In the end Mrs Eardlow rang Honeysuckle Cottage, not without misgivings. The Eardlows came of a generation who had grown up without telephones. It was only in very recent years, since their health had grown frail, that they had had a phone installed. They regarded it as an instrument to be used in emergencies and with due respect for the cost of calls. Nor had they any wish to appear to be prying into Julie’s life.

It was the first time Mrs Eardlow had spoken to Miss Tysoe; she had found her pleasant enough. Miss Tysoe told her Julie wasn’t there, she hadn’t been there for some time, she was on indefinite leave from her job at the Advertiser. She had gone for a holiday to Calcott House in May. Miss Tysoe didn’t know her present whereabouts but she wasn’t anxious; she was confident Julie would turn up again when it suited her.

The Eardlows were at first reassured by this but after mulling it over for a day or two their uneasiness surfaced again. Why should Julie have decided to go on indefinite leave? Had there been difficulties at work? And what about the money side of it? How was she managing?

So they finally rang the Millbourne Advertiser and spoke to the proprietor, Mr Fielding. He told them Julie had not been in touch with the office since going on leave in May. She had given no reasons for wishing to take extended leave and she had not been pressed on the matter. She had always been a good worker and the Advertiser was happy to accommodate her in this instance. They were sure she would return when she had resolved whatever it was that had made her ask for leave. Her job would certainly be waiting for her; the Eardlows need have no worries on that score. Fielding had no idea of her present whereabouts.

Again, when the call was over, the Eardlows felt reassured to some extent, but again, after a day or two, their anxieties sprang up as strongly as ever.

This time they phoned Calcott House and spoke to Mrs Marchant. She told them Miss Dawson had stayed at the hotel from May 10th to May 16th. There had been no trouble or upset of any kind during her stay; she paid her bill on the day she left. The only address the hotel had any note of was her Millbourne address, Honeysuckle Cottage, but Mrs Marchant seemed to remember that Miss Dawson had said something on leaving about going to a caravan. No, Mrs Marchant had no idea where the caravan might be. She couldn’t even be certain she was correct in associating that remark with Miss Dawson; it could have been some other guest. No, the hotel had had no communication from Miss Dawson after she left; there had been no mail or phone calls for her since then. Nor had anyone come to the hotel asking to see her.

By now the Eardlows found themselves very far from reassured. They talked it over for another couple of days, arguing back and forth. Probably there was nothing at all amiss – but if it later turned out that there was, they would never forgive themselves if they had just let the matter go.

In the end they decided with a good deal of trepidation to write to the Cannonbridge police and leave it up to them to judge if any inquiries were necessary.

Lambert told them he would report back to his Chief. ‘I’ll let you know what’s decided,’ he added as he stood up to leave. ‘In the meantime, try not to worry. Young women can be very impulsive. Julie could turn up any day, astonished to hear you’ve been so anxious about her.’

‘I dare say you’re right,’ Eardlow agreed. ‘We’re not able to get about much these days, we do tend to sit and chew things over. I suppose we’re inclined to get things out of proportion.’

They thanked the sergeant profusely for coming over to see them. They insisted on going with him to the door, shaking his hand on the threshold. Mrs Eardlow looked up into Lambert’s face as he took her frail old fingers into his strong, warm clasp.

‘I’m still not happy in my mind,’ she told him earnestly. ‘Whatever kind of sudden notion Julie may have taken into her head, she’d never have forgotten our anniversary.’ She shook her head with feeble force. ‘Not Julie. Never in a million years.’

CHAPTER 5

Chief Inspector Kelsey was about to drag himself off to a conference for a few days and wasn’t looking forward to the prospect. He certainly wasn’t disposed to feel overmuch concern for Miss Julie Dawson. ‘Skittish young females,’ he said to Lambert on a note of trenchant censure. Over the years he had come across many of the ilk, light-minded creatures who woke up one bright morning and took it into their heads to skedaddle without a word to relatives or friends – to give those same relatives and friends a good fright, as often as not, or merely to gain attention. Or indulging themselves in a fit of the sulks after a few cross words. Or scarpered with the latest boyfriend. Or simply decided to cut loose for a while. Needless work for the police, needless worry for the family. ‘All it takes is a postcard,’ he said sourly. ‘Or a phone call. Never enters their silly heads.’ No doubt Miss Julie Dawson would stroll blithely in where she belonged when she’d had enough of the sulks or the boyfriend.

He was strongly minded to do nothing whatever in the matter. But there were the Eardlows, old, frail, anxious. ‘Better look into it,’ he told Lambert grudgingly. ‘But don’t go making a big production number out of it, just fit it in with everything else.’ Lambert knew the form well enough, he’d been over this kind of ground often before. He knew precisely how much time to spend, how much to do, just enough to be able to reassure the relatives the police were reasonably certain the girl had come to no harm. And that was what he set about over the next few days. His first step was to discover via a series of phone calls which estate agents in the area handled holiday lettings of caravans. He found three and went off to visit them all. He was in luck. At his first call, an office in the centre of Cannonbridge, the manager produced records which showed that a caravan had indeed been rented by a Miss Julie Dawson, giving the Honeysuckle Cottage address. She had taken the caravan from Tuesday, May 16th, to Saturday, May 27th. She had paid in full, in advance, by cheque, on Monday, May 15th. He could supply no further details himself, he didn’t attend to such bookings, but he passed Lambert on to the female clerk who had dealt with Miss Dawson. The woman did recall the matter. Two details in particular stood out in her memory: Miss Dawson’s unusually beautiful hair and her insistence on the cheapest possible let. She didn’t mind where the caravan was or how basic its amenities but she wanted to move in as soon as possible. The clerk was able to suit Miss Dawson immediately with the cheapest caravan on their books. It was old, isolated, furnished and equipped to a bare minimum, and in consequence difficult to let. It belonged to a fishing enthusiast, a bachelor, who kept it principally for his own use, whenever he could get away from his city job to fish the local streams. It was vacant at the time Miss Dawson made her inquiry; the next booking was for May 27th. Miss Dawson took it for the whole of the interim.

The caravan stood on a small farm a few miles from Calcott village. The clerk gave Miss Dawson directions for finding the farm; the keys were kept at the farmhouse. ‘Something else, I remember,’ she threw in suddenly. ‘Miss Dawson didn’t stay quite the full time at the caravan. And she didn’t return the keys to the farmhouse. They were dropped in here.’ She had found them in the mail on the Friday morning, May 26th; they hadn’t been sent by post, they had been delivered by hand. She particularly remembered because there had been no note, no word of any kind with the keys. They had simply been put into an envelope and pushed through the letter box. Every key ring carried a tag giving the name and address of the estate agent, together with a number identifying the property to which the keys belonged.

There had been no further contact of any kind with Miss Dawson. The clerk had no idea where she might have gone after leaving the caravan.

The following afternoon Lambert drove out to the farm, a small, old-fashioned, man-and-wife enterprise that appeared far from thriving. A stream ran between overhanging willows along one boundary. Close by, Lambert saw a sizable stretch of shadowy, gloomy-looking woodland, overgrown and neglected.

He walked across the cobbled yard to the farmhouse. His knock at the door was answered by a harassed-looking woman in late middle age. Her hands were covered in flour, wisps of hair stuck out around her face. She didn’t invite Lambert inside but answered his questions on the doorstep, briskly and without embellishment, already half turned back towards the demands of her kitchen. Her husband wasn’t in, he was out at a farm sale, she couldn’t say when he’d be back.

Yes, she remembered Miss Dawson very well; that is, she couldn’t recall the name but she did clearly remember a girl staying in the caravan in the latter part of May. It was the only time she could remember a pretty young girl staying in the caravan on her own, and she too had been struck by the beauty of the girl’s hair. Miss Dawson had also been unusual in that she had never called at the farmhouse for milk, eggs or vegetables, had never stopped by for a chat, never asked if it was all right if she took a stroll round the farm. ‘In fact, I only ever saw her twice,’ the woman added. ‘The day she came, when she called in here for the keys, and one other time, a day or two later – I saw her in the distance, walking towards the wood.’ The caravan stood at quite some distance from the house and wasn’t visible from it.

The woman was paid to clean the caravan after each let. There had been nothing untoward when she had cleaned through after Miss Dawson’s stay; she had found nothing left behind.

The caravan was currently occupied by a young couple with a baby. They had gone out for the day and wouldn’t be back till it was time to put the baby to bed. They would have taken the caravan keys with them; there was only the one set. She jerked her head. Even if she had a second set she wouldn’t have been happy about letting the sergeant take a look inside in the absence of the young couple. But he was welcome to walk over there, to see the location. He must excuse her from going with him, she was up to her eyes just now.

Lambert followed her directions. The caravan was in a secluded spot, well out of sight and earshot of both the farmhouse and the road, provided with an even greater degree of privacy by a thick screen of trees. The caravan curtains had been left closed.

He stood for some moments glancing about. The breeze carried with it the scent of clover fields. From the topmost branches of a nearby tree rang out the clear, bell-like notes of a blackcap.

The situation was certainly pleasant enough. Apart from the glowering presence of the wood.

Next day Sergeant Lambert found himself free in the middle of the morning to run over to Millbourne. The town was somewhat smaller than Cannonbridge, thirty miles away.

As he neared Honeysuckle Cottage the road took him through undulating countryside, past deep gorges running between thickly wooded hills, green copses, bracken-covered slopes, old gravel pits and quarries filled with water, hedgerows decked with wild roses.

Because of the phone call she had recently received from the Eardlows, Audrey Tysoe wasn’t surprised at Lambert’s visit. She was busy in the garden when he arrived but she broke off readily enough. Lambert noticed her limp. Habitual, he guessed, probably from some old injury; she used no stick, wore no plaster or bandage that might suggest a more recent mishap.

She took him into her charming cottage, sat him down and gave him coffee. No, she wasn’t anxious about Julie, she was sure she would turn up again before long. She had left most of her things at the cottage – that must surely mean she intended returning, if only to collect her belongings. She had lodged with Miss Tysoe for two years. Before that she had stayed with three or four other landladies but hadn’t been happy with any of them.

Miss Tysoe didn’t normally take in lodgers. She had been in charge of personnel at the Advertiser until her retirement and Julie had told her she hadn’t been able to find digs she was happy in. ‘I offered to take her in here, temporarily,’ Miss Tysoe explained. ‘Till she could look round to find somewhere she really liked. But we both found it worked well, her being here. I liked having someone around in the evenings and at weekends, and Julie liked living out of town; it was what she had been used to before she came to Millbourne. She wasn’t a girl who wanted to go out much in her free time. So she stayed on.’

But they had never been close. Both tended to be self-sufficient, and Julie was not by nature a confiding girl. It was a satisfactory relationship of good-natured live and let live, with mutual benefits. There had never been any friction between them.

Lambert told her he now knew that Julie had stayed in a caravan for several days after leaving Calcott House. No, Miss Tysoe had no idea where Julie might have gone at the end of her caravan stay. She wasn’t entirely surprised at Julie taking herself off on indefinite leave; she had been showing signs of restlessness for some time. She had made remarks about the Advertiser being small fry, Millbourne being a very provincial place, Honeysuckle Cottage being in a backwater.

From her years in personnel work Miss Tysoe had garnered a good deal of experience of young women and she believed she could read the signs. ‘I think it could have been her twentieth birthday that sparked it off,’ she hazarded. ‘She seemed to feel it was some kind of milestone. When she first came to Millbourne she hadn’t long lost her mother. She badly needed a breathing space to come to terms with adult life. And I suppose, coming more or less straight from school into a newspaper office, from a little village to a town, it all seemed new, interesting and exciting, being out in the world on her own, learning a job, earning money.

‘But that was three years ago. By this time she must feel on top of her job, it can’t be much of a challenge any more. She’s probably beginning to want something livelier and more demanding. She might feel she’s completed one stage of her growing up – after all, at twenty, she’s no longer an adolescent. I imagine she’s ready to spread her wings again, take a good look at her life and how she intends to spend it. She’ll come back, I’m positive, when she’s reached some decisions.’

‘What about boyfriends?’ Lambert wanted to know. ‘A pretty young girl, she must surely have boyfriends.’

But Miss Tysoe was positive there was no one. Nor did Julie have any close girlfriend. There had been two girls at the Advertiser she had been friendly with at one time but both had left some time ago. As far as Miss Tysoe knew, Julie hadn’t kept up with either of them, nor could she say where either was now living. She was sure Julie had made no special friend since then. ‘Most of the young women at the Advertiser are married, with young families,’ she pointed out. ‘They have their own very busy lives to lead, apart from their jobs.’

Lambert asked if she could tell him the name of Julie’s bank and she was able to supply it. She also told him Julie had a savings account with a building society, but she didn’t know which one. Nor did she know if she had a post-office account.

Lambert asked if he might look through her things. She took him upstairs to a good-sized room, comfortably furnished as a bedsitter. ‘She often stayed up here, reading or watching TV,’ Miss Tysoe told him. She indicated a portable television set, well-filled bookshelves. ‘If she wanted to join me downstairs, she was always welcome.’

Lambert went over to the bookshelves and stooped to read the spines. Old bound editions of the Strand Magazine, handsome copies of Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, John Buchan, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie. He picked out a book at random and opened it. An ornamental ex-libris plate bore a name and date written in faded ink: Gilbert Michael Dawson. March, 1935.

He picked out other books here and there. Some bore the same bookplate with dates ranging from the thirties to the sixties. Others carried more modern plates with Julie’s name – written sometimes in a schoolgirl hand, sometimes in a more adult style, with more recent dates.

The room was very neat. ‘That’s the way she left it,’ Miss Tysoe said. ‘I’ve never had to clear up after her, she’s always been tidy.’

Lambert glanced through the contents of the wardrobe, through drawers and cupboards; he opened the bureau. He found no bank books, no chequebook or credit cards. No letters or diaries, no personal papers of any interest.

But he did come across a folder of snapshots: Julie at various ages, exterior views of a cottage, a garden, a couple who were clearly her parents. Another woman, sitting beside Julie’s mother in the garden under an apple tree, looked about the same age as Julie’s mother. There were several snapshots of a freckle-faced, dark-haired lad of nine or ten, with a cheerful, open smile. And a few photographs of the Eardlows, taken some years ago when they were rather more hale and hearty.

Miss Tysoe could identify none of the photographs; Julie had never shown them to her. She had said little about her background and Miss Tysoe had never pressed her.

When Sergeant Lambert left, Miss Tysoe came limping out to the car with him. ‘I’ll be sure to let you know the moment I hear anything from Julie,’ she assured him. ‘And of course I’ll let the Eardlows know too. I’m pretty certain in my own mind she’s just gone off to think things out. She may decide to leave here altogether, find herself a job in London or some other city. After all, she has no ties, she can please herself.’

Lambert drove on into Millbourne. He called at Julie’s bank and spoke to the manager. Julie had a current account with the bank; it hadn’t been disturbed since the third week in May, the last two transactions being cheques drawn on the account, one dated May 15th, in favour of the estate agent from whom she had hired the caravan and the other, dated May 16th, made out to Calcott House.

Lambert went next to the Advertiser premises, a few doors from the bank. Mr Fielding was busy but when the sergeant’s name and an indication of his mission were sent in to him he broke off at once and came along to reception. He shook hands with Lambert and took him into his office. On the way he mentioned the recent phone call he had received from the Eardlows. He was sorry they felt so worried. He was sure the anxiety was groundless, he had done his best to reassure them. Had the police found any genuine cause for alarm?

No, Lambert told him. They were merely looking into the matter, trying to discover if there was any need for concern, hoping very shortly to be able themselves to reassure the old couple.

In the office Lambert told Fielding he had traced Julie to a caravan a few miles from the hotel where she had gone after leaving Honeysuckle Cottage. She had left the caravan in the last week of May and there, for the moment, at least, the trail ended.

Fielding asked in what way he could be of use. His manner was friendly and helpful. The sergeant told him it would be useful to know Fielding’s general impression of the girl, any idea he had about what might have led her to go off in this way, any guess at where or with whom she might now be. Perhaps, he suggested, Fielding might harbour some half-formed notion, too ill-defined to mention over the phone to the Eardlows, which might nevertheless be of use to the police.

Fielding shook his head with regret. No, he had no such notion. In the three years Julie had been with the Advertiser she had always been a willing and capable worker, punctual and accurate. She had progressed from the general office to telephone sales and was earning good money. He had thought her happy and satisfied in her job. She certainly hadn’t come to him looking for some further opportunity, something with more challenge. If she had he would have taken her seriously, would have done his best to find her a suitable niche.

He was not aware of any trouble between Julie and any other employee. She was a quiet girl with a pleasant manner. The official position was that she was on indefinite leave, unpaid now as her entitlement to paid leave had run out. Her job was being kept open for her – within reason. When she went off in the second week in May Fielding had never imagined she would be absent as long as this, but he would make no attempt to fill her job permanently for another month or two.

Whenever she came back she would be listened to sympathetically. If it turned out that some illness had overtaken her, if she had suffered any kind of breakdown, then she would – if she so wished – be reinstated and her absence treated as sick leave, with backdated pay.

But if it should turn out that she had decided to leave permanently, had found herself another job, maybe, there would be no difficulty about that. She would be given any references she might require, very good references, too. She would be advised about pension rights.

As to what Fielding’s own private guess might be, he admitted he still felt no real concern. He had employed a good deal of female labour for some years now; sudden departures, abrupt termination of employment, unexplained absences, brief or more lengthy, were by no means unknown. He smiled. ‘Usually it’s for some personal reason – when a reason is ever given. You learn not to ask too many questions; you don’t want to find yourself involved in some emotional mishmash, drowned in floods of tears.’

On that score, no, he knew of no boyfriend among the Advertiser staff. ‘But I would scarcely expect to know,’ he added. ‘I never concern myself with gossip, there’s far too much work to be done. Audrey Tysoe – Julie’s landlady at Honeysuckle Cottage; she used to run Personnel here till she retired – she’d be far more likely to know about anything like that.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If there’s nothing further, I do have an appointment.’

Lambert rose at once. He thanked Fielding for his time, his assistance. If he learned anything definite he would be sure to let Fielding know. Fielding promised to do the same.

Fielding shook hands, walked with him into the corridor. ‘I don’t for one moment think anything’s happened to Julie,’ he said with conviction. ‘In my opinion she’s a girl well able to take care of herself.’

CHAPTER 6

On Monday morning Chief Inspector Kelsey returned from his conference in a worse state than ever. Late nights, smoke-filled rooms, food and drink far too abundant, too indigestible.

A great many matters clamoured for his attention. Very low on his list of priorities came the unknown whereabouts of Miss Julie Dawson. He listened with ill-concealed impatience as Lambert sketched in a brief account of his endeavours with regard to the missing girl. Towards the end of the sergeant’s recital the Chief burst into a paroxysm of coughing. He reached into a drawer and laid hold of yet another bottle containing yet another lethal-looking mixture. He took an extra-long swig, totally heedless by now of all warnings on all labels.

He replaced the bottle in the drawer and sat leaning forward, gasping. No good, he thought, I’m going to have to give in. I can’t go on like this. For once in his life he was going to have to do what the doctor ordered, remove himself from the scene for a couple of weeks. He didn’t give a tuppenny toss where, just somewhere quiet and soothing, where he could let his mind go completely blank, let peace wash over him.

He became aware that Lambert had finished his spiel and was waiting for his response. The Chief pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘I can’t see anything in it. She’s a grown woman, not a child. She’s able to please herself as to what she does, where she goes. I’ve decided to take some leave, I’m never going to feel right till I do. You can forget Julie Dawson. Drop the case.’

Lambert at once suggested that he should take some leave himself at the same time. He still didn’t feel one hundred per cent right.

‘Fine,’ the Chief agreed without hesitation. ‘Good idea. Better get started clearing up the odds and ends. Don’t want to leave things in an almighty mess.’ A thought struck him. ‘Those relatives of the girl, what was the name? Eardlow, that was it. Better get over there to see them, have a word in person.’ Old folk, easily overwhelmed by anxiety, justified or not; a letter or phone call would be too impersonal, would do little to calm their fears.

On Thursday afternoon Lambert managed to find an hour to spare for the Eardlows. This time he didn’t let them know he was coming. He was quite certain he would find them both at home and the last thing he wanted was for the two of them to wear themselves out cleaning and polishing, preparing another elaborate tea.

And he did find them both at home, watching an old film on television. They searched his face apprehensively, fearful of what he might be about to disclose. He tried to reassure them, leave them in a hopeful frame of mind. They did their best to oblige him by assuming looks of buoyant optimism but he was far from sure that he had succeeded in his attempt.

‘Don’t forget,’ he reminded them as he left. ‘Let us know the moment you hear anything from Julie.’

By Friday afternoon Kelsey and Lambert had cleared their desks. The Chief had booked himself a cruise, a cancellation vacancy. He was due to board the ship on Sunday, not without deep misgivings. ‘You’ll love it,’ they told him encouragingly in the police canteen. ‘All those footloose, blue-rinse ladies. Six to one, the ratio, by all accounts.’ It was not what he wanted to hear.

Sergeant Lambert had not as yet decided where to go. He would allow himself a day or two to unwind, think about it, decide between the attractions of Sussex and Wales.

His landlady had been delighted to learn he would be taking himself off. She had made immediate plans for having his room redecorated while he was away.

When he came in on Friday evening, relaxed and smiling at the thought of two weeks of utter idleness, she asked when he was likely to be off.

‘All in good time,’ he promised.

By the time he had washed and changed, eaten his meal, he had more or less decided on Sussex. It would be good to see his sister and her family again. Two or three times during the evening he picked up the phone. Once he got as far as beginning to tap out the number. But always something niggled at his mind, preventing him from going further, some little point of disquiet he couldn’t identify. Always he replaced the receiver.

On Saturday morning he woke early to discover, the moment he reached consciousness, that the niggle had at last declared itself: what if it wasn’t Julie Dawson but someone else who had returned the caravan keys to the estate agent? Someone who didn’t know about the arrangement with the farmhouse, someone who cleared Julie’s things out of the caravan, locking it afterwards. Someone who read the agent’s address on the key tag, put the keys in an envelope, drove into Cannonbridge during the hours of darkness, slipped the keys in through the letter box.

He linked his hands behind his head and lay staring up at the ceiling. He could spend the first few days of his leave here, in his digs; use them to have another unobtrusive little ferret round on his own. He wouldn’t be a detective sergeant on duty, just a holidaying member of the public. Nothing to stop him touring round the area; no law against chatting to folk here and there.

More than once in the course of Sunday his landlady permitted herself to display overt signs of irritation. Deep sighs, clicks of the tongue, shakes of the head. By evening she could contain herself no longer.

‘I can’t for the life of me think why you should want to hang round Cannonbridge when you’re supposed to be on leave,’ she burst out at him. ‘Any ordinary normal human being’ – by which she meant any citizen not in the police force – ‘would be only too glad to get away from the place for a real break. Heaven knows it’s no beauty spot.’

Lambert judged it prudent to offer no reply.

Shortly before ten on Monday morning he began his unobtrusive little ferret round by driving over to Calcott House.

The holiday season was advancing towards its peak. The car park was a good deal more crowded than on his previous visit, the number of guests had visibly increased, there was considerably more bustle.

As he came into the hall he saw the plump, pouter-pigeon figure of Mrs Marchant. She was standing chatting to a family party, her marmalade hair dressed higher than ever. Her sharp, darting eyes came to rest on him; he saw recognition wake in her face. She gave him a little fleeting nod and resumed her chat. He stood to one side, discreetly waiting till she was free. In the to and fro of the hall he caught here and there an American voice, the accents of France and Germany. After a few minutes the family party went off down the front steps and Mrs Marchant came over to him.

She smiled archly as she approached. ‘I remember you,’ she greeted him before he could open his mouth. ‘You lunched here back in the spring, with Miss Dawson.’ She made an apologetic movement of her head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.’ Lambert supplied it.

‘It’s about Miss Dawson that I’m here,’ he told her.

She broke in before he could go further. ‘I thought it might be.’ She explained that after the phone call from the Eardlows she had questioned the hotel staff in a fruitless attempt to discover if anyone could offer a guess as to Miss Dawson’s whereabouts. In the course of her questioning she had unearthed the fact that the lunch guest at Miss Dawson’s table that Friday in the spring had been a policeman, a detective sergeant; Miss Dawson had confided as much to Iris, one of the waitresses.

‘The Eardlows told me they were thinking of going to the police if they had no luck with their own inquiries,’ she added. ‘I take it Miss Dawson hasn’t turned up yet?’

‘No, I’m afraid she hasn’t.’ Mrs Marchant clearly took it for granted he was here on an official visit and he didn’t correct this impression.

She apologized for the absence of her husband who had gone into town on business. She took Lambert into the office and sat him down but she didn’t offer any refreshment. Her manner on the surface was friendly and helpful but on another level he was receiving with unmistakable clarity a totally different message: Say what you have to say and then clear off out of here. This duality in no way surprised him. He well knew that no hotel, guest house or similar establishment encourages the presence of police on its premises; nothing makes the clientele more uneasy.

He set about dispatching his business as speedily as possible. He asked if Mrs Marchant could remember anyone calling at the hotel asking for Miss Dawson during her stay, any phone calls or mail that might have caused Miss Dawson distress.

She shook her head. There had been nothing like that. There had been no trouble with any guest or member of staff, nor was she aware of any friendship Miss Dawson had struck up while she was at the hotel.

Lambert asked if she had mentioned the matter of Miss Dawson’s present whereabouts to any of the guests. She looked horrified at the idea. She fervently hoped the sergeant had no intention of questioning any of the guests. She could assure him there was nothing to be gained by such questioning. The bulk of the guests at this moment were short-stay holiday-makers or overnight bed-and-breakfasters, none of whom had set foot in the hotel while Miss Dawson was there. The long-stay residents who had been at the hotel during Miss Dawson’s stay had either left for good or were currently away on holiday or staying with relatives; one had been taken ill and had gone into hospital.

Lambert assured her he had no intention of even speaking to any of the guests, let alone attempting to question them. She gave a sigh of relief.

He asked if she knew where in Calcott village Miss Dawson had lived before she went to Millbourne but she shook her head. Miss Dawson had mentioned that she used to live in the village but she hadn’t said where. Perhaps Iris, the waitress, might know, Lambert suggested; Miss Dawson might have chatted to her in the dining room. Would it be possible to speak to her?

Mrs Marchant considered. Yes, that would be all right. ‘Iris works 10.30 to 2.30,’ she told him. She glanced at her watch. ‘She’ll be in by now. She’s never late, she lives just down the road. I’ll go and get her for you.’ She paused in the doorway. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?’

Lambert told her no. ‘Then I’ll leave you to it,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ve a dozen things to attend to. I’m sure you won’t mind seeing yourself out when you’ve spoken to Iris.’

And Iris, when she appeared a few minutes later, was able to give him Julie’s old address in the village. She had not herself known the Dawson family. ‘The cottage is quite some distance from where I live,’ she told Lambert. ‘You have to go right through the village and out the other side.’ She gave him detailed directions.

She could offer no suggestion as to where Julie might be now. Miss Dawson had often chatted to her while a meal was being served but she hadn’t mentioned future plans. When she left the hotel Iris had told her she was welcome to drop in at her house for a cup of tea any afternoon if she found it lonely in the caravan. Miss Dawson did in fact drop in and they had spent a pleasant hour in casual conversation. Miss Dawson had said nothing that might throw any light on her intentions.

‘Did she ever mention anyone she’d met while she was staying at the hotel?’ Lambert asked. ‘Some man who took an interest in her? One of the guests, perhaps? Maybe someone she’d known when she lived in the village? Or someone she chanced to meet while she was going round visiting different places in the area?’

‘If you mean some sort of romantic interest,’ Iris said, ‘she never mentioned anything like that. She didn’t seem much interested in that kind of thing.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘A pretty girl like that, you’d expect her to have boyfriends, wouldn’t you?’ She grinned. ‘I did have a shot at getting her to open up, I’m nosy that way. But I couldn’t get anything out of her. She was quite definite there wasn’t anyone.’ She grinned again. ‘Could be, of course, there’s someone she’s not letting on about – for one reason or another.’

As Lambert came down the hotel steps he heard in the distance the put-put of a motor mower. He set off towards the car park. He didn’t turn his head to look across the wide expanse of lawn to where Luke Marchant on a ride-on machine drove up and down the greensward in a beautiful, precise pattern.

CHAPTER 7

The cottage where the Dawsons had lived was the first of a pair of semi-detached dwellings in a quiet, pleasant lane just outside the village. Lambert rang and knocked but got no reply. He went round to the back, knocked and rang again, without success.

In the adjoining garden a woman was picking peas. She looked across as he went up to the fence to speak to her. A motherly, cheerful-looking woman in her sixties, with an air of capable common sense. She walked over to the fence. She had rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes; thick, wavy hair, a greying chestnut, coiled up on top of her head. Lambert recognized her – and the two gardens – from the snapshots in Julie’s room at Honeysuckle Cottage. She was the woman sitting beside Julie’s mother under the apple tree.

‘You won’t get any answer next door till this evening,’ she told him. ‘They’re both out at work.’

He explained that he was a detective, trying to locate a young woman, a Miss Julie Dawson. She broke in before he could say any more. ‘I know Julie Dawson. I’ve known her since the day she was born.’ She looked up at him with concern. ‘Why are the police trying to find her? Is something wrong?’

He told her briefly about the Eardlows, the police inquiry. ‘I thought Miss Dawson might have called at her old home. She might have mentioned her plans to the people who live there now.’

‘Julie did call here, back in the spring,’ she confirmed. ‘But it was to see me, not the people next door. She never knew them; they wouldn’t be able to tell you anything. They’re not from this village. They moved in next door a month or two after Julie left here, three years ago – these are rented cottages.’

Lambert asked if she could remember exactly when Julie had called to see her.

‘She came more than once,’ she told him. ‘The first time was at the end of April, she was staying at Calcott House for the weekend. Then she called again in May, when she came back to the hotel for a longer stay.’ She paused. ‘You’d better come inside. I’ll make a cup of tea.’ She gave him a friendly smile. ‘My name’s Norbury, by the way. I’ve lived in this cottage over forty years. I came here as a bride.’

He walked back round again and in through Mrs Norbury’s gate. Her front garden spilled over with pinks, sweet william, love-in-a-mist, stocks, lilies; the air was full of perfume. She opened the door and took him along a passage into a comfortable kitchen with its windows open to the breeze.

‘I was always fond of Julie,’ she said as she made the tea. ‘She was in and out of here a lot when she was a child. She was a bright, happy little girl, always lively and imaginative. I was very friendly with her mother, she was the same age as me – Julie’s father was a lot older. He died about ten years ago, he’d been retired five years by then.’

She got out a tin of biscuits. ‘Julie’s mother died three years ago.’ She sighed. ‘I still miss her. Julie was only seventeen at the time. She’d left school a year before, she was halfway through a secretarial course. Her mother wasn’t ill very long. It must have been a terrible shock for Julie when she died, though she seemed to take it quite well.

‘She made up her mind what she was going to do very quickly. I thought she ought to take more time to think it over. My husband was alive then. He tried to advise her; he thought it most unwise to decide in such a hurry.’ She shook her head. ‘But there was no changing her mind. She knew what she wanted to do and she did it. There was no one to stop her, no aunt or uncle, no grandparents.’

She poured the tea and sat down opposite Lambert. ‘She sold the furniture – there wasn’t a great deal but there were some nice pieces. It gave her something in the bank to start her off. And of course she had what money her mother left. It wasn’t a fortune but her parents had always been careful.’

She drank her tea. ‘I suggested she moved in here with us, she could finish her secretarial course at the college.’ She shook her head. ‘She was very polite, very grateful, but she’d come to her own decisions. She was going to make a new start, leave the area, find herself a job, finish her secretarial course at evening classes.’

She pressed Lambert to biscuits. ‘I must say she managed everything very efficiently. My husband tried to help but she would do it all on her own. In no time at all she was off. She told me she’d got a job in Millbourne, on one of those free newspapers.’ She never heard from Julie after she left, never got a letter or a Christmas card. ‘I must admit I was rather hurt by that, but I could understand it in a way. I think she was pretty well knocked sideways when her mother died, however little she tried to show it. I think she felt the only way she could get to grips with things, make a life for herself on her own, was to plunge right in, sink or swim by her own efforts. It was a brave thing to do, when you come to think about it, a girl just seventeen, all on her own. I don’t know if I’d have had the gumption at her age, to do what she did.’

She poured more tea. ‘I was really surprised, I can tell you, that day back in April when there was a ring at the door and there she stood, smiling at me. I’d never expected to see her again; I’d often wondered how she was getting on. I always felt sure she’d make out all right, she’d been so competent and independent after her mother died.’

She sighed. ‘She didn’t know about my husband, of course; she was very upset when I told her he’d passed away. She told me she was here just for the weekend. She said: “You’ll never guess where I’m staying – Calcott House.” I said she must be doing well if she could afford their prices. She laughed and said she’d always dreamed of staying there when she was a child – and she was enjoying it just as much as she’d imagined she would. She liked it so much she’d decided to come back soon for a longer break, a week or two.

‘I told her she was welcome to call at any time and that Simon – he’s my grandson – would be coming in May for two weeks, when the school would be on holiday. Julie had just missed him. He’d been staying with me over Easter; he’d gone back to school a few days earlier. Julie knew Simon from when she lived next door and Simon used to come here on visits with his parents. He’s eleven, my one and only grandchild, my son’s boy. His mother was killed in a road accident four years ago; my son’s never had any thought of marrying again. He’s an engineer. He’s out in Turkey just now, working on a big construction project. He’s got a two-year contract, he went out there six months ago. Simon’s at a prep school. He’s a boarder; he’s very happy there.’

She took another biscuit. ‘Julie did call again when she came back for a longer holiday. She’d left the hotel and moved into a caravan a few days before she called here. Simon had arrived from school the day before. Of course he’d grown a lot since the last time she’d seen him, she hardly knew him for a moment. But they got friendly again very quickly. Simon was laid up when she came.’ She laughed. ‘He’d gone running round the garden just after he got here. He climbed up into a tree and jumped down again.’ She spread her hands. ‘He twisted his ankle. That was a fine start to his holiday. The doctor said it wasn’t a bad sprain but he’d have to rest it for at least a week. It was bandaged up and I put him on the sofa in the sitting room during the day.

‘Fortunately he’s never been a child that’s easily bored so it wasn’t too bad for him, he had his books and his woodcarving. That was my husband’s hobby, woodcarving, he taught Simon a lot. After he died I kept all his tools, all his wood, for Simon. He’s really quite good at it, when you think how young he is.

‘And then, of course, there was Julie. She came to see him a few times. She played chess with him – she used to play chess with her father. I left the two of them while I got on with my chores or popped into the village. I used to hear them laughing together, as if they were both children. Simon really looked forward to seeing her.’

She fell silent for a moment. ‘It made me remember the lad Julie was so friendly with when she was a child. He was the only close playmate she ever had. She didn’t go to the village school; her parents sent her to a private day school in the town. Her father used to take her in every day, he was a clerk in an office. None of the other pupils in her class came from the village. The lad she was so friendly with, he went to the village school but he lived quite near here, and he was an only child too. He was the same age as Julie. They played together from when they were small. They were both full of fun and adventurous, though they never got up to any real mischief.’

She looked across at Lambert. ‘One summer when they were about eleven years old, the lad went off to the seaside with his parents for a holiday. He got carried out to sea on one of those rubber floats and he was drowned. It was a terrible blow for Julie. She couldn’t seem to accept that he was dead. It was quite a time before his body was washed up and she’d half convinced herself he’d turn up again safe and sound, it had all been some silly prank.’ She sighed. ‘She never palled up again with any other youngster, not in the same way.’

She fell silent again, then she said, ‘The second time Julie called here to see Simon – that was the very next day – I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened the door to her. She’d had all her beautiful hair cut off.’ She pulled a little face. ‘I made out I liked it short. I said I thought it suited her, but I didn’t like it at all. I thought it was a terrible shame to cut it off. She was still nice-looking, of course, but nowhere near as pretty. It made her features look very sharp, and she’d left off all her make-up. She’d got jeans and a T-shirt on. She looked just like a mischievous lad or one of those actresses playing Peter Pan. She didn’t say why she’d done it and I didn’t ask her.’ She moved her head. ‘But it did just cross my mind it could have been on account of Simon. He’s the same age now as that other lad was when he was drowned. I did wonder if she was making believe she was a child again, making believe Simon was that other boy come back to life.’

She stood up and began to clear the cups from the table. ‘Julie called again early the next week.’ She cast her mind back. ‘That was on the Tuesday. I remember because I popped into the village while she was here, to go to the butcher’s – I always go to the butcher’s on a Tuesday.’ She consulted a wall calendar. ‘May 23rd, that would be.’ She returned to the sink and began to wash up the cups. ‘That was the last time she called.’

‘Did she say it was going to be the last time?’ Lambert asked.

‘No, she didn’t. I knew she’d have to move out of the caravan on the Saturday. She didn’t actually say she’d be going back to Millbourne, back to her job, after she left the caravan. I just assumed that’s what she’d be doing.’

‘Did Simon expect her to call again?’

‘Yes, he did. When the days went by and she didn’t come, I asked him if she’d said anything definite about calling again. He said no, she hadn’t.’ She consulted the calendar again. ‘He was here another ten days after the last time Julie called. He went back to school on the Friday, June 2nd. His ankle was fine by then.’

Lambert asked if she knew of any boyfriends Julie might have, back in Millbourne, but she shook her head. Julie had said nothing about any boyfriend. She had never had boyfriends as a teenager when she lived next door.

Nor had Julie made any mention of any problem she might be having. She hadn’t appeared in any way worried, she seemed to be enjoying her break.

‘Would you say she’s the type who might decide to take off for somewhere new on the spur of the moment?’ Lambert asked.

‘Yes, I could easily imagine her doing that,’ Mrs Norbury answered without hesitation. ‘If she got bored with her life, wanted something different. I could imagine her just deciding to go, turning her back completely on the old life. After all, that’s more or less what she did after her mother died.’

He asked if she had any objection to his visiting Simon at his boarding school, in case Simon might have any clue to offer.

‘No objection at all,’ she assured him. Would he like her to ring the headmaster now, to explain? To say he would be calling with her agreement.

‘That’s very good of you,’ Lambert said. ‘I’d like to go tomorrow if that’s all right with the school. But I’d rather Simon wasn’t told I’m coming.’

‘Yes, I quite see that,’ she agreed. ‘Better not give him time to start using his imagination, working up some tale that could be half moonshine. And best not give him time to start worrying about it, come to that.’

She took him into the sitting room and rang the school. The headmaster was most cooperative. He would expect the sergeant tomorrow. It would be least interrupting to Simon’s timetable if Lambert could call in the early afternoon.

‘Simon’s flying off to Turkey tomorrow week, to join his father,’ Mrs Norbury said when she had replaced the receiver. ‘He’s spending the whole of the summer holidays out there. He’s looking forward to it tremendously. It’s the first time he’s flown anywhere on his own.’

She walked over to a handsome set of bookshelves, one third filled with books neatly ranged. ‘My husband made this set of shelves as a Christmas present for Simon, the year before he died.’ She ran a hand lovingly along the silky wood. ‘Simon’s always loved books. He goes poking round second-hand shops and market stalls, looking for them.’

Lambert scanned the shelves: Jules Verne, Marryat, Conrad, Jack London, Zane Grey, Edgar Wallace, bound copies of the Rover and the Champion. Shades of his own boyhood returned for a moment. ‘Quite a collection he’s got there,’ he said on a fleeting note of envy.

‘Julie and Simon had a good long natter about books,’ Mrs Norbury said. ‘Julie read a lot as a child – she got that from her father. His hobby was books; he had hundreds of them. Not first editions or anything grand like that, just old books he’d picked up over the years. Most of them went to a dealer after he died. Julie kept the ones she liked best and some of her father’s favourites.’

She picked up some small pieces of carved wood from shelves set in a niche by the fireplace. ‘Simon made these. Not bad, are they, for a young boy?’ She indicated a tiny fieldmouse. ‘He was only nine when he made that.’

She picked up another piece. ‘This is one he made this last time, when he was laid up with his ankle.’ A little retriever puppy, lovingly fashioned, a mellow, golden shade of wood. She passed it to Lambert.

‘He has quite a gift,’ Lambert said.

‘It’s made from pine,’ Mrs Norbury told him. ‘A beautiful piece of wood. It was the colour decided Simon to make the puppy out of it, just right for a golden retriever.’

He handed the puppy back to her and she replaced it on the shelf.

‘He made some lovely little good-luck charms, too, out of the same wood, to take back to school for the boys – and Matron.’ She smiled. ‘Matron’s quite young. And pretty. He made a special one for Julie, a four-leafed sprig of clover. He took tremendous care over the finishing. Julie was delighted with it. She said she’d always carry it, it was certain to bring her luck.’

She came out to the car with Lambert when he left. ‘I really don’t think the Eardlows need worry about Julie,’ she said as he switched on the engine. ‘She left here three years ago and there was never a word from her, then one day she rang my doorbell.’ Her tone was buoyant, confident. ‘I’m sure that will happen again one day, and probably sooner rather than later. The bell will ring and there she’ll be, on the doorstep, smiling at me.’

CHAPTER 8

The preparatory school where Simon Norbury was a boarder lay a good hour’s drive from Cannonbridge. Lambert left his digs shortly after breakfast – and wasn’t at all sorry to leave. His landlady’s eyes constantly searched his face for any sign that he had reached a decision about where he was going for his holiday and when he would be setting off.

It was a warm, sunny day. The grass glittered on the breezy commons, rosebay willowherb flowered along the banks. He enjoyed a leisurely drive, stopping from time to time for a snack, a spot of sightseeing.

It was almost 1.30 as he approached the school, an Edwardian mansion set at the head of a long avenue of lime trees breaking into blossom. Lunch was over. In the relaxed, end-of-term atmosphere, all examinations finished, lessons were confined now to the mornings, the afternoons being devoted to cricket, to a series of house matches.

The headmaster, a young, energetic man, was shut away in his study, composing a moving appeal for funds to be sent out to all the parents, in the hope of raising enough to update all the school’s computer equipment. When Lambert tracked him down he dispatched a passing pupil to the changing rooms to winkle out young Norbury.

Simon came hurrying along a few minutes later. He wore cricketing gear; a dark-haired, athletically built lad with a confident grin, a face plentifully sprinkled with freckles.

The headmaster made the introductions, presenting Lambert as a sergeant with the Cannonbridge police – no mention made of his being a detective – who was here now with the permission of Simon’s grandmother to ask him a few questions, in case he might be able to help them in one of their inquiries.

Simon looked mightily intrigued; his face glowed with pleasurable importance. ‘You can take Sergeant Lambert out into the grounds,’ the head added. ‘Find somewhere quiet to sit down and have your chat, then you can get off to the cricket.’

As they went along the corridor Lambert inquired about Simon’s ankle.

‘It’s fine now, thank you.’ Simon looked up at him with lively curiosity. ‘Are you a friend of Gran’s?’

‘No, I can’t say I am,’ Lambert admitted. ‘I met her yesterday for the first time. We had a good long chat. We’re trying to get in touch with a young woman called Julie Dawson; her relatives are anxious about her. She seems to have gone off somewhere without telling anyone where she was going. Your grandmother tells me you know Julie, she came to see you in May, while you were staying in Calcott.’

Simon nodded. ‘That’s right.’ A question burst from him. ‘Are you a detective?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Are you the detective Julie met? She told me she’d met a detective sergeant the last time she’d stayed at Calcott House. She’d never met a detective before.’

‘Yes, that’s me,’ Lambert confirmed.

Simon’s eyes darted over him as if expecting to discover some extraordinary attributes.

‘A person couldn’t tell you were a detective by looking at you.’ His voice held a strong note of disappointment but a moment later he added as if a more favourable thought had struck him, ‘But I expect that’s the idea?’

‘Something like that,’ Lambert acknowledged.

They came out into the soft, sweet air. From every direction boys in cricketing gear, singly or in groups, hurried towards the playing fields, an occasional master among them. The air was full of excited chatter.

Simon gazed after them with an expression of longing. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll take very long, whatever it is you want to ask me,’ he suggested hopefully.

‘Not if we get started right away,’ Lambert told him briskly. He spotted a wooden seat beside a stretch of lawn. ‘We’ll sit down over there, then we can get on with it.’ Simon almost broke into a run in his eagerness to reach the seat and get the whole thing over with.

They sat down. From the seat, fortunately, there was no view of the playing fields. ‘Your grandmother told me you got on well with Julie,’ Lambert began at once. ‘I thought maybe when you were chatting she might have given you some idea where she intended going after she left the caravan.’

Simon shook his head. ‘I don’t know where she went, she never said anything. Did Gran tell you I’m flying out to Turkey a week today? My father’s working out there. I’ve been looking up all about Turkey in the school library, maps and everything. I reckon I know more about Turkey now than any of the masters.’

‘Did Julie ever mention any problems she had?’ Lambert managed to get in. ‘Any troubles or difficulties? Back in Millbourne, perhaps?’

Again Simon shook his head. ‘She never talked about anything like that. She didn’t seem worried about anything. She was always in a good mood, she laughed a lot. My father says there’ll be other British children flying out for the holidays. Some of the mothers will be out there too, they’re going to arrange trips and picnics for us. It’s not far from the sea, we’ll be able to swim and sail. There’ll be all sorts of things to do.’ He gave a wide grin. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. None of the other boys in my class has ever been to Turkey. I’ve asked every single one and I’m the very first. Have you ever been to Turkey?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ Lambert kept a grip on his patience. ‘Nor am ever likely to go. Now do try to think. Is there anything at all you can remember that might give us a hint? Even something that might not seem very important. Please try to give your mind to it, you might recall something.’

Simon dragged his thoughts back from the bazaars and mosques, the fig trees and the roses.

‘Just the letter, I suppose,’ he said after a moment. ‘I don’t know if that would be any use. I don’t expect so. It was just a game.’

‘Letter?’ Lambert echoed sharply. ‘What letter?’

From the playing fields came a wave of clapping and cheering. Simon jumped as if galvanized; his head jerked round.

‘What letter?’ Lambert asked again.

Simon moved his shoulders. ‘Just a letter she found.’

‘Where did she find it?’

‘In the hotel, when she was packing her things to go to the caravan. She opened a drawer in the bureau and she pulled it too hard; it came right out. The letter was in the space underneath; it had slipped down from the drawer.’

‘Do you know what was in the letter?’

‘No, I can’t remember. But I’ve got the letter upstairs in the dormitory with my things. She gave it to me, for safekeeping, she said. She’d made a copy of it for herself.’

‘When did she tell you all this? When did she give you the letter?’

‘She told me about the letter on the Saturday, that was the second day she called. It was the next time she came, on the Tuesday, that she gave me the letter to put away somewhere safe, in case anything happened.’

‘What did she mean by that? In case anything happened?’

‘I don’t know.’ Simon frowned. ‘I suppose she meant she could have lost it.’

‘Would you mind fetching the letter?’ Lambert asked.

Simon sprang up and sped off, returning shortly with equal speed. He handed Lambert an envelope and dropped down again beside him.

‘The name on the envelope,’ he explained, ‘the lady it’s addressed to, Julie said that was the name of the lady who’d had the room before her at the hotel.’

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