‘I was going to ask you to drive Harry’s car home,’ she said, ‘but I suppose you can’t.’
I explained that Harry’s car had already been driven away.
‘Where is it, then?’ she asked, bewildered. ‘Who took it?’
‘Maybe Doone will find out.’
‘That man!’ She shivered. ‘I hate him.’
Before I could comment, a nurse came to fetch her to see Harry, and she went anxiously, calling over her shoulder for me to wait for her; and when she returned half a hour later she looked dazed.
‘Harry’s sleepy,’ she said. ‘He kept waking up and telling me silly things... How could you possibly get to this hospital in a
‘I’ll tell you on the way home. Would you like me to drive?’
‘But...’
‘It’s quite easy with bare feet. I’ll take off my socks.’
She unlocked the car herself and handed me the keys without comment. We arranged ourselves in the seats and as we headed for Shellerton in the early dark I told her calmly, incompletely and without terrors, the gist of what had befallen us in Sam’s boatyard.
She listened with a frown, adding her own worry.
‘Turn right here,’ she said once, automatically, and another time, ‘Sorry, we should have turned left there, we’ll have to go back,’ and finally, ‘Go straight to Shellerton House. I’ll drive home from there. I’m all right, really. It’s just so upsetting. It made me shaky, seeing Harry dopey like that, pumped full of drugs.’
‘I know.’
I pulled up outside Tremayne’s house and while I put on my socks again she said she would come in for a while for company, ‘to cure the trembles’.
Tremayne, Mackie and Perkin were all in the family room for the usual evening drinks. Tremayne made more than his usual fuss over Fiona, sensing some sort of turmoil, telling her comfortably that Mackie had just come back from Ascot races where he’d sent a runner for the apprentice race which had proved a total waste of time.
The note I’d left for Tremayne, ‘GONE OUT WITH HARRY. BACK FOR GRUB’ was still pinned to the cork-board. He took my arrival with Fiona as not needing comment.
‘I think someone tried to kill Harry,’ Fiona said starkly, cutting abruptly through Tremayne’s continuing Ascot chat.
‘What?’
There was an instant silence and general shock on all the faces, including Fiona’s own.
‘He went to Sam’s boatyard and fell through some floorboards and was nearly drowned...’ She told it to them much as I’d told her myself. ‘If John hadn’t been with him to help...’
Tremayne said robustly, ‘My dearest girl, it must have been the most dreadful accident. Whoever would want to kill Harry?’
‘No one,’ Perkin said, his voice an echo of Tremayne’s. ‘I mean, what for?’
‘Harry’s a dear,’ Mackie said, nodding.
‘You’d never think so to read the papers recently,’ Fiona pointed out, lines creasing her forehead. ‘People can be incredibly vicious. Even people in the village. I went into the shop this morning and everyone stopped talking and stared at me. People I’ve known for years. I told Harry and he was furious, but what can we do? And now this...’
‘Did Harry say someone tried to kill him?’ Perkin asked.
Fiona shook her head. ‘Harry was too dopey.’
‘Does John think so?’
Fiona glanced at me. ‘John didn’t actually say so. It’s what I think myself. What I’m afraid of. It scares me to think of it.’
‘Then don’t, darling.’ Mackie put an arm round her and kissed her cheek. ‘It’s a frightening thing to have happened, but Harry
‘But someone stole his car,’ Fiona said, hollow-eyed.
‘Perhaps he left the key in the ignition,’ Tremayne guessed, ‘and a passer-by saw an opportunity.’
Fiona agreed unwillingly, ‘Yes, he would have left his keys. He trusts people. I’ve told him over and over again that you simply
They all spent time reassuring Fiona until the worst of the worry unwound from her body and I watched the movement of her silver-blond hair in the soft lights and made no attempt to throw doubts because it would have achieved nothing good.
With Doone, early the next afternoon, it was a different matter. He’d had my bald account of events over the telephone in the morning, his first knowledge of what had happened. Now he came into the dining-room where I was working and sat down opposite me at the table.
‘I hear you’re a proper little hero,’ he said dryly.
‘Oh, really, who says so?’
‘Mr Goodhaven.’
I stared back blandly with the same expression that he was trying on me. The morning’s bulletin on Harry had been good, the prognosis excellent, his memory of events reportedly clarifying fast.
‘Accident or attempted murder?’ Doone asked, apparently seeking a considered answer.
I gave him one. ‘The latter, I’d say. Have you found his car?’
‘Not yet.’ He frowned at me with a long look in which I read nothing. ‘Where would you search for it?’ he asked.
After a pause I said, ‘At the top of a cliff.’
He blinked.
‘Don’t you think so?’ I said.
‘Beachy Head? Dover?’ he suggested. ‘A long drive to the sea.’
‘Maybe a metaphorical cliff,’ I said.
‘Go on, then.’
‘Is it usual,’ I asked, ‘for policemen to ask for theories from the general public?’
