‘He didn’t want your father to go to prison. Because he’s your father. He’s sent others there, but he didn’t want it to happen to your father, or to Trevor King. So he warned them, and gave them time to destroy things. Evidence. Paper and records.’ She glanced back at me. ‘He told me on Saturday what he planned... to tell your father how much he knew, and to offer him a bargain. Time, enough time, if he would destroy his tracks and go, in a way which would cause you least pain. Time to go before the police arrived to confiscate his passport. Time to arrange his life as best he could. And they made him pay for the time he gave them. He paid for every second of it...’ She gestured in frustrated disgust towards the table and the cut pieces of cloth, ‘...in agony.’
‘Hilary,’ I protested.
There never had been any stopping Hilary Pinlock in full flight. She said fiercely to Jossie, ‘He can put up with a lot, but I reckon it’s too much to have you reviling him for what he’s suffered for your sake. So you just get some sense into your little bird-brain, and beg his pardon.’
I helplessly shook my head. Jossie stood with her mouth open in shattered shock, and then she looked at the table, and discarded the thought.
‘Dad would never have done that,’ she said.
‘There were five of them,’ I said wearily. ‘People do things in gangs which they would never have done on their own.’
She looked at me with shadowed eyes. Then she turned abruptly on her heel and walked out of the room.
‘She’s terribly upset,’ Hilary said, making allowances.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘No.’
She made a face. ‘I’ll get you something. They must at least have aspirins in this house.’
‘Tell me first,’ I said, ‘how you got here.’
‘Oh. I was worried. I rang your cottage all evening. Late into the night. And again this morning, early. I had a feeling... I didn’t think it would hurt if I came over to check, so I drove to your cottage... but of course you weren’t there. I saw your neighbour, Mrs Morris, and she said you hadn’t been home all night. So then I went to your office. They were in a tizzy because some time between last night and this morning your partner had taken away a great many papers, and neither of you had turned up for work.’
‘What time...’ I said.
‘About half past nine, when I went to the office.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s a quarter to eleven, now.’
Fourteen hours, I thought numbly. It must have been at least fourteen hours, that I’d been lying there.
‘Well, I drove to Finch’s house,’ she said. ‘I had a bit of trouble finding the way, and when I got there, everything was in a shambles. There was a girl secretary weeping all over the place. People asking what was going on... and your girl Jossie in a dumbstruck state. I asked her if she’d seen you. I said I thought you could be in real trouble. I asked her where Trevor King lived. I made her come with me, to show me the way. I tried to tell her what her father had been doing, and how he’d abducted you, but she didn’t want to believe it.’
‘No.’
‘So then we arrived here, and found you.’
‘How did you get in?’
‘The back door was wide open.’
‘Wide...?’
I had a sudden picture of Trevor going out to the kitchen, saying it was to fetch some money. To open the door. To give me a tiny chance. Poor Trevor.
‘That package I gave you,’ I said. ‘With all the photostats. When you get home, will you burn it?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘Mm.’
Jossie came back and sprawled in a red armchair, all angular legs.
‘Sorry,’ she said abruptly.
‘So am I.’
‘You did help him,’ she said.
Hilary said, ‘Do good to those who despitefully use you.’
I slid my eyes her way. ‘That’s enough of that.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Jossie demanded.
Hilary shook her head with a smile and went on an aspirin hunt. Butazolidin, I imagined, would do more good. Things were better now I was sitting in a chair, but a long old way from right.
‘He left me a letter,’ Jossie said. ‘More or less the same as yours.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Dear Jossie, Sorry, Love, Dad.’
‘Oh.’
‘He said he was going to France...’ She broke off, and stared ahead of her, her face full of misery. ‘Life’s going to be unutterably bloody, isn’t it,’ she said, ‘for a long time to come?’
‘Mm.’
‘What am I going to do?’ The question was a rhetorical wail, but I answered it.
‘I did want to warn you,’ I said. ‘But I couldn’t... before I’d talked to your father. I meant it, though, about you coming to live in the cottage. If you thought... that you could.’
‘Ro...’ Her voice was little more than a breath.
I sat and ached, and thought in depression about telephoning the Nantuckets, and the chaos I’d have to deal with in the office.
Jossie turned her head towards me and gave me a long inspection.
‘You look spineless,’ she said. Her voice was half-way back in spirit to the old healthy mockery; shaky, but doing its best. ‘And I’ll tell you something else.’ She paused and swallowed.
‘When Dad went, he left me behind, but he took the detestable Lida with him.’
There was enough, in that, for the future.