She had a great advantage in that, as the closest to George in age, she had been his most frequent guardian, mentor, entertainer, and fellow conspirator. The habit of subservience was deep ingrained, and soon he was reassured that her tears had merely been one of those woman things that cloud a man’s horizons briefly but quickly pass if you pay them no heed.
George was a simple soul in the very best sense of the phrase. He was bright enough, in the top half of his class at school, and from an early age demonstrated a firm grasp of both the practicalities and the economy of farming. But his attitude to life was one of sunny optimism. He saw everything in black and white; he liked everyone he met until they proved themselves unlikable, upon which he shrugged and moved on, his conviction that the world and its inhabitants were on the whole bloody marvelous undinted. Girls loved him and he loved them back, but so far he’d never gone steady with anyone, declaring that he’d need to find someone like his sister Charley, and there was only one of her.
Away from home, at college, Charley’s explorations of what made human beings tick had for a time woken awful doubts about incestuous love, but soon as she came home for the vacation and saw his open honest face and broad grin, all such fears had fled away. Seeing him enjoying himself like a kid in a sweetie shop during their skiing holiday at Davos, and hearing her lucky friends’ rapturous reports of their encounters, disposed of any residual worries.
Memories of the ski trip were triggered now as she gave him a blow-by-blow account of the events of the past two days. Death didn’t mean a lot to George, unless it was the death of someone he knew personally, and his reaction to her account of Lady D’s passing had more of X-movie shock/horror than of genuine human empathy in it.
Then he said, with the cheerfulness of one whose personal compass always turns toward the brightest quarter, “At least it means Ess and Em won’t need to go skulking around anymore.”
“Sorry?”
“You said when I told you about seeing Emil, he were likely embarrassed at running into someone he knew ’cos him and Ess would want to keep things quiet for fear of auntie’s reaction. Now she’s dead, they needn’t bother, need they?”
“No. You’re right. They needn’t…”
Her mind was racing. How come she hadn’t thought of this before? Until she had the details of the will, she had no idea to what extent Esther would benefit from the murder. In any case, despite her instinctive dislike of the woman, she felt unable to believe her capable of a cold-blooded killing just for a bit of money. On the other hand, what must have really pissed her off was having to skulk around, as George had put it, just because this bossy vulgar parvenu woman wouldn’t approve her chosen mate.
Also she’d have an ally, a young fit man who, for all that Charley knew, was as cold-blooded as they came. Though it must have been Esther’s special knowledge of her aunt’s struggles with the animal rights people that had suggested putting her in the roasting frame instead of the pig…
She tried all this out on George, who listened as raptly as he used to when she invented bedtime stories peopled with local characters to send him to sleep, only to find that her penchant for Gothic excitements had quite the opposite effect.
“Yeah, that’s great,” he said. “You certainly haven’t lost your touch, sis.”
“My touch? No, George, this isn’t one of my stories, this is a hypothesis. This could actually have happened!”
His expression changed.
“I just thought you were making it up, like the vicar and the vampires, or that one about Miss Hardy at the school and the poisoned milk. That was my favorite…”
“They were different. They were just daft stories. What’s happened here is real.”
“But what you’re saying about Emil…he seems such a nice guy, I really liked him. No, I think you’ve got it all wrong, sis. Not Emil. He’s not like that.”
She looked at him with exasperated fondness and said, “How can you know that? You only met Emil a couple of times at Davos, right? And you’ve seen him once since-”
“Twice,” he said.
“Twice?”
“Yeah. Remember I gave him my number when I bumped into him at the filling station, asked him to ring if he was anywhere near? Well, he rang Friday afternoon, said he was on his way home, catching a ferry later that night, and did I fancy a quick drink early on? So we met up at the Nag’s Head.”
What did this signify? Charley tried to compartmentalize her thoughts, rational inference on the one side, imaginative speculation on the other. It wasn’t easy. One of her tutors had rather dryly remarked, “The beginning of all analysis is self-analysis. In your case, Miss Heywood, perhaps it should be the end as well.”
“So what did you talk about?” she asked.
“Talked a lot about you, actually,” George said, grinning.
“Me? But I only knew him by sight. I mean, there was no way for any other girl to get near him with poison ivy Ess twined round him the way she did!”
“Well, you certainly made a big impression, he wanted to know all about you.”
Charley found this incomprehensible. She was sure Emil hadn’t even noticed her!
Then it struck her. Friday was the day she’d gone to Denham Park and out of sheer bloody malice reminded Esther that she’d seen her and Em last December in the Bengel bar. Suddenly her creative imagination was racing. In Ess’s shoes, she’d have taken the first opportunity to pass this on to Emil. He, recalling his recent encounter with George, had scented danger. Digging out George’s telephone number, he’d made the phone call and fixed a meet. Charley knew her brother. By the time Emil finished chatting to him, the Swiss would know every detail of what George had told her and how she’d responded. Em was probably reassured that she wasn’t going to go running to Lady D with the news that he was in the county, but just to make assurance doubly sure, he’d suggested to Esther that it might be time to mend a few fences, which would explain her sudden attack of amiability at the hog roast!
None of this fit in with a picture of the frustrated lovers having hatched a cunning plan to top Lady Denham later that afternoon. But that didn’t matter. To Charley the whole business felt extempore. Maybe for some reason Emil had come to see Esther at Sandytown Hall…maybe Daph had surprised them…maybe…
“Oh, I nearly forgot, a letter came for you. Mum said it looked like Liam’s handwriting,” said George with a grin.
Her mother of course had been right, thought Charley as she took the envelope. I bet she was tempted to steam it open!
She tried not to check for signs of tampering as she tore it open, but found she couldn’t help it! There were none.
She read the single sheet quickly. It was a full, frank, and fulsome apology. All his fault, he was a heel, didn’t know what had come over him.
Dirty Dot, that’s what, thought Charley savagely.
But as grovels went, it was a pretty good grovel, ending with assurances that he’d realized he couldn’t live without her and a plea to be given one more chance.
“Who’s this then?” said George.
She looked up to see Andy Dalziel coming toward them and quickly thrust the letter into her pocket.
“Superintendent Dalziel, Dad’s old rugby mate,” she said.
George rose to his feet and held out his hand. Dalziel was no dwarf, but Charley was secretly pleased to see he had to look up at her brother.
“Hi there, Mr. Dalziel,” said George, beaming his irresistible smile. “I’m George Heywood. Dad’s told me a lot about you.”
“Oh aye? Never told me he were breeding giants. Glad to meet you, lad. What position do you play?”
“Second row at school, but I don’t play anymore since I left.”
“No? What’s Stompy thinking of? Can think of half a dozen top teams as ’ud give their eyeteeth for a youngster built like you.”
Charley could have told him that her father had reluctantly come to terms with the fact that his giant son had everything except the killer instinct. Opponents might bounce off him as he moved forward, but instead of trampling them underfoot, George was more likely to help them up and ask if they were all right.