Today, however, there were no questions. Edie scarcely even acknowledged that Rachael had been to Neville’s home. Something else had caught her attention.
“Are you ready to go?” she said. “I don’t suppose we’ll need coats.
It’s still warm, isn’t it?” “I thought you might make me a coffee.”
“No, no.” Edie was firm. “There’s no time for that. It’s late as it is to go visiting.”
“Oh God, Edie. Where are you off to? Surely I don’t have to come.” It must have been one of Edie’s women friends on the phone, probably drunk, certainly weepy, demanding support, someone to drink with and these conversations always went on until the early hours.
“You don’t have to but I thought you might be interested.”
“Why? Who is it?” Rachael was absent-minded, still pondering Neville Furness. She told herself it was ridiculous to be imagining herself established in the kitchen at Black Law Farm after one fleeting kiss and an evening of stilted and awkward conversation. After Peter Kemp she should know better. Her judgement was crap.
“Charles Noble,” Edie said, triumphantly.
“Who?” For a moment the name meant nothing to her. She tried to dredge up memories of men Edie had taught with at college, gentlemen callers who had all been at one time potential fathers to Rachael.
“Charles Noble. Bella’s brother. He’s just rung. He’s been trying to phone me apparently but of course there was nobody here to take the call and he said he didn’t like to leave a message on the answer machine.” Rachael didn’t respond with sufficient interest and Edie shouted grumpily, “Well, are you coming?”
Charles Noble was waiting for them in the road. He’d already unlocked the high security gates which blocked the entrance to the stable yard.
The stables were lit by security lights and the shadow of the wire mesh fence was thrown across him like a cage. He was dressed in a grey tracksuit and Rachael was reminded of the jogger who had been waiting in the street outside her mother’s house.
They drove through the stables and up to the house, then got out of the car and waited for Noble to padlock the security gates once more and join them. Rachael had the unnerving feeling that she was being locked inside a prison compound and experienced a moment of panic. She hoped Edie had had the sense to tell Vera Stanhope or Joe Ashworth what she’d planned to do. Otherwise no one would know they were there. From the horse boxes came the sound of horses breathing and the rustle of crushed straw, the sweet smell of muck and leather.
“I don’t know why this couldn’t have waited until morning,” Noble said, before he’d even got to them. Rachael could tell he was already regretting his phone call to Edie. “Louise and I usually go to bed very early. We’re busy people.”
“So are we, Mr. Noble.” Edie was brisk, efficient. Good God, Rachael thought, she could be playing a detective in a TV cop show. She’d always had a weakness for watching them.
“You’d better come in then.” He, at least, seemed taken in by her air of authority and opened the front door to show them into a wide hall and on into a living room, which was tastefully furnished in a bland Marks & Spencer sort of way in terra cotta and cream. The long curtains were drawn and the table lights were still switched on, but the room was empty.
“Louise must have gone to bed,” he said unhappily.
“I know she’s got a hectic day tomorrow. She’s organizing a charity lunch. She’s very active with the Red Cross.”
“We’ll have to speak to her,” Edie said. “She did take the call from Bella after all.” Then, maliciously, “We’ll only have to come back tomorrow and we wouldn’t want to interrupt her if she’s having guests.
It might be embarrassing.”
“You couldn’t do that.”
“Oh, we could. Inspector Stanhope’s very interested in Bella’s suicide. You do remember Inspector Stanhope? She was one of the team investigating your father’s death.”
“Wait here. I’ll go and find her.”
Louise Noble was wearing silk pyjamas and a dressing gown, but hadn’t yet taken off her make-up. She was an attractive woman with high cheekbones and long curly hair, copper-coloured and tied away from her face. Rachael had been expecting someone worn out and stuffy like Charles, but Louise was in her early forties and rather nervy. As she followed him into the room, she lit a cigarette.
“I was on my way to bed,” she said, not aggressively but in explanation for the dressing gown. Throughout the encounter Rachael had the impression of a little girl playing at mums and dads. The lunches, the dinners, all these seemed to be endured because they were what you did when you were grown up. It was difficult to imagine her with a child of her own, or as the power behind Charles’s expansion plans.
“You’ll forgive the intrusion.” Edie sat down without waiting to be asked. “We’ll try not to keep you.”
“I really don’t see how I can help… ” Louise took a drag on her cigarette, set it carefully to rest in a glass ashtray. “I explained to Charlie… “
“And I understand.” Charles patted his wife’s hand.
“It wasn’t that I tried to keep secrets from him. I mean his sister didn’t really say anything very important. It was just that we’re so settled and so happy, the three of us. And I thought, well, she’d done that terrible thing to his father, it was probably just as well to forget all about it. If she intruded into his life again he’d only get hurt.”
She patted at her eyes with a tissue. The mascara didn’t smudge.
Charles took her hand. He was clearly besotted.
Louise turned towards him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how I’d cope if you’d brought her here. What would I say to her? And then when you told me she’d killed herself, I didn’t know how to tell you she’d phoned… ” She looked up at Edie, wide-eyed, desperate for understanding. “I can’t see how it would have made any difference.
Even if Charles had phoned her back. Even if he’d gone to see her. I mean she’d already decided to kill herself, hadn’t she? Charles said she wasn’t the kind of person to do anything on impulse. So it would have happened anyway. It wasn’t my fault.”
Charles, stroking her hand, murmured again that of course it wasn’t her fault.
“When exactly did she phone?” Edie was firm but not unkind. It was the tone she used with spoilt pupils having to come to terms with the reality of the exam system.
“I’ve been trying to think, haven’t I, Charlie? You were at work. I was on my own here.”
“Where was your daughter?”
“Not here. Definitely not. Because if she’s in I always let her answer the phone. At that age their friends phone all the time and they talk for hours, don’t they, even if they only saw each other an hour ago. And then after I spoke to Bella I thought thank God Lucy’s not in because she’d probably have taken the call and then we’d have had to explain. She doesn’t know, you see, about Bella and Charlie’s dad.”
“Can you remember where Lucy was? That might help us to pin down a date.”
Louise sat for a moment, frowning, then her face cleared, a pantomime of enlightenment. “It was the school trip to Newcastle to see Macbeth in the Theatre Royal. I’d just come in. I’d taken down a car load and another parent was going to bring them all home. The school had arranged a coach but it had been double-booked and we’d all had to turn out at the last minute. I remember because I was so flustered.”
She beamed round at them, proud of the detail of her memory. It was almost, Rachael thought bitterly, as if she expected applause. Could she really be that childish?
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