‘I’m going to move back home,’ said Lucy.
‘Do you think that’s wise?’ asked Gordon, more than a little alarmed at the idea in the circumstances.
Lucy shrugged and said, ‘I’m not sure if wisdom comes into it. My sister’s been a gem but there are limits to how long I can keep imposing on her and her husband; they have a life of their own to be getting on with. Apart from that, I miss my home, it’s never going to be the same — it couldn’t possibly be without our Anne-Marie — but it’s still my home, John’s home too.’
Gordon saw Lucy’s eyes become moist; she was fighting back the tears. He said gently, ‘He loves you very much, you know.’
‘Then why won’t he see me? He still must think in his heart of hearts that I did it.’
‘No, that’s not the reason. John knows that the circumstantial evidence against you both is so damning that you’d both end up going to prison for a very long time if he pleaded not guilty. He wants to take the blame alone so that only one of you need go to jail and probably for a shorter time if what Roberts says is true. He loves you that much, Lucy.’
Lucy broke down in floods of tears and Gordon wrapped his arm round her shoulders, holding and shushing her until she regained control. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised.
‘No need.’
‘I can’t allow him to do this,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s not fair and it’s not right. We didn’t do it! We didn’t kill our baby! Oh Tom, I miss her so much. I keep thinking of her in the cold ground. She didn’t stand a chance.’ Lucy sobbed into her handkerchief.
‘I know, I know,’ soothed Gordon. He held her close until she had sobbed herself out. ‘But for justice to prevail, we’ll have to catch the person who did kill Anne-Marie.’
‘And just how are we going to do that? The police won’t listen to anyone or anything except John’s stupid confession.’
‘There are a couple of things to go on,’ said Gordon.
‘Are you serious?’ asked Lucy obviously wanting to believe what she was hearing but still cautious.
Gordon nodded and said, ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes too much but with a bit of luck, I may have some information to give the police in the next few days. I don’t want to say more than that for the moment but believe me, whatever happens, I’m not going to stop trying.’
‘Tom, I can’t begin to thank you enough for what you’ve done and what you’re doing. You’ve been a real friend.’
The Trools lived in a mansion house, obviously built in Victorian times, with lawns stretching down to the water’s edge where Gordon could see they had their own boathouse and landing stage. As he drew to a halt in front of the main entrance, he had the feeling that his aged Land Rover might look more at home round the back or down by the stable block. He dismissed the feeling with a small smile and parked it on the gravel drive outside the front door.
‘Good to see you, Tom. In you come and meet Sonia,’ said James Trool as he opened the door and made Gordon welcome.
Gordon had heard that Trool’s wife was extremely good looking and various references had been made to the fact that she was considerably younger than Trool, but he was still unprepared for what he saw when Sonia Trool walked into the room. She looked as if she had just stepped out from the pages of Vogue or had taken a wrong turning off the catwalk in Milan. She was stunning.
‘And this is Charlotte,’ said Trool sweeping a toddler up in to his arms from the floor where she had been playing with a white furry rabbit, decked out in blue ribbon with little bells attached to its neck. Charlotte giggled as her father tickled her and said, ‘‘Time for bed, little one.’
The smile on Gordon’s lips faltered a little when Trool turned and he could see that Charlotte was blind. Her face had clearly suffered some major trauma in the past although not badly disfigured now. He thought he remembered some mention of a car accident having featured in the Trools’ meeting.
‘Hello Charlotte,’ said Gordon gently. He stroked the back of her hand but the child was more interested in arguing about going to bed.
‘Just a little while longer,’ she wheedled.
‘No, it’s bedtime Charlotte,’ said Sonia firmly, then turning to Gordon she added, ‘Charlotte has more stamina and energy than James and me put together.’
‘It’s such a wonderful house to be a child in,’ said Gordon, his eyes alluding to the sheer size of the place.
‘You know, that’s just what I thought when I first saw it,’ said Trool. ‘It’s just the place for the Famous Five or the Secret Seven to have their adventures.’
Sonia smiled and said, ‘Why don’t you put Charlotte to bed, darling and I’ll show Tom around.’
Trool took Charlotte upstairs and Sonia started to show Gordon the house. ‘I don’t know if James told you about the accident?’ she said.
Gordon said not.
‘That’s really how James and I came to meet. Don — my first husband — and I were over in Britain with Charlotte on vacation and doing the tourist thing. We were on our way to visit Caernarfon Castle when we were involved in a car accident on the dual carriageway. Teenage joy-riders lost control of the car they’d stolen and it crossed the central reservation right into our path. We were all brought in to Caernarfon General but Don was already dead and Charlotte was badly hurt. I got away with a ruptured spleen and some fractured ribs from which I made a full recovery but Charlotte was left blind.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Gordon.
‘James oversaw our treatment throughout our rather lengthy stay at the General so we saw a lot of each other over the months that followed the accident. He was wonderful with Charlotte, seeing that she got nothing but the best of treatment throughout. To cut a long story short, we ended up getting married and I never went back to the States.
Gordon smiled and nodded politely but he wondered about the foundations for such a marriage. It was a common enough thing for patients to fall in love with their physicians and an understandable one too, in situations where trust and dependency were involved. But such feelings usually faded with the help of gentle discouragement from the doctor or simply with the returning self-confidence of the patient as part of the recovery process. He was tempted to consider that Trool, who was clearly old enough to be Sonia’s father, might have abused the situation and exploited his patient’s vulnerability but, from what little he’d seen of them together so far, it was Sonia who seemed to have the dominant personality. Whatever the circumstances, he reminded himself that it was really none of his business.
The tour of the house ended in the original huge, iron-framed conservatory built on to the back of the house and which commanded uninterrupted views over the Menai. Although it was dark and these views were restricted to lights twinkling on the other side of the water, Gordon realised that, in the daytime, it would be possible to see the mountains of Snowdonia.
‘Why don’t we sit here a while,’ suggested Sonia. ‘James will join us soon and we can have a drink before we eat.’
Gordon sat down in one of the cane armchairs among the potted plants, enjoying the smell of leaves and earth indoors. ‘You know,’ said Sonia, ‘James really is grateful to you for back-pedalling on the Megan Griffiths thing. I am too.’
For a moment, Sonia seemed to look directly at Gordon as if adding silent emphasis to what she’d said. Gordon dismissed it as imagination and insisted, ‘It wasn’t a case of back-pedalling; there was just no reason to say anything to the press right now.’
Sonia smiled and said, ‘None the less, we’re very grateful. James really cares about the hospital’s reputation, you know — he takes it all so personally. He’s an old sweetie.’