Chapter 3

Tuesday evening, now only 4 more shopping days to Christmas

Marina emerged from the light and warmth of the hall to the hostile outside environment. She was intending to walk what she thought was about three or four miles or so down the country lanes to the railway station; in fact the station is nearly five miles away, more than three-quarters of the countryside on unpaved and unlit country lanes with treacherously deep drainage ditches on either side.

It was now snowing heavily with giant wet flakes, a layer of snow two to three inches deep already on the pavement surface. It felt damnably cold, so she took out the compact mac from her bag and put it on in the shelter of the village hall’s entrance. It only covered down to just below her knees and soon after she started walking her recently almost dried-out trouser legs became wringing wet once more from the melted snow running off her waterproofs due to the poor insulation allowing her body heat to escape. She got as far as a wooden bus shelter in the darkness. She had her torch in her bag and checked the arrivals and departures on the bus stop post, seeing that the last bus that stopped there was at 18.26 and the next bus wasn’t until a few minutes past 6am in the morning. It was still only just gone 11pm, so it meant another seven hours before getting on the bus, followed by up to another three hours before she got home and would be able to soak in a hot bath and get warm again. She hadn’t noticed any hotel in the immediate area, the village appeared to be far too small to support one. There was always the pub, she remembered. She went back to the lane where the pub was but it was closed and still in darkness. She didn’t have enough money on her to pay for a room in any case.

The few cars which had driven down the road passed her as she walked, mostly from the meeting she presumed, and soon dwindled to a trickle. Then there was just the odd late car going by, and eventually there were none.

She walked back to the bus shelter, and continued past it, slipping and sliding through the thickening carpet of snow for a hundred yards or so, but the lane petered out to open countryside. The last of the cars going through illuminated the road for some way ahead until the road turned to the left and she could see nothing, not even a pavement and it was clearly too risky going any further by foot in the weather conditions which prevailed.

Marina returned to the bus shelter and made herself comfortable on the seat inside, resolved to spend the rest of the night there. She had warmed up a little during the exertions of her walk through the driving snow but it was extremely cold and within a few minutes of sitting in the draughty shelter she felt chilled to the bone once more. She shivered, feeling alone and more than a little foolish sitting there.

Marina just couldn’t get Daniel Medcalf out of her thoughts. How could she possibly have been contemplating murdering him? How could she consider murdering anyone at all?

Her pain at being reminded of the loss of her baby Daniel and the circumstances surrounding his conception must have made her temporarily insane, she thought. That could be the only explanation. Clearly, even from the brief conversations she had been forced into having with Daniel tonight, he had been pleasant, gentlemanly and chatty, so much like the Daniel she knew and fell so deeply in love with all those years ago.

Fell in love with! Yes, of course she had at the time, and, she had to admit to herself, she was still just as much in love with him now. Well, why shouldn’t she be? He was handsome, charming, very personable, a successful local personality and an eligible widower. The singular aberration between them, the conception of a child without her permission or even knowledge, happened in their youth when she wasn’t used to drink and he may well have been equally inebriated as well. Perhaps, being so infatuated, that with her libido loosened by the excess alcohol, she had led him on? Knowing how she felt about him, she would never have admitted back then that she loved him. She was far too shy a girl to have done that.

But what of her actions if she wasn’t sober? What if the alcohol had made her lose her inhibitions?

She may well have encouraged him to make love to her all those years ago. She just couldn’t remember anything that happened after meeting Daniel in the corridor and briefly kissing him.

For a moment, sitting cold and all alone in that bus shelter, Marina let it all out and openly weeped. She had made a complete mess of her life, that she had blamed Daniel for everything that had happened to her since, and now she came to the conclusion that it was almost certainly her fault all along. She was the guilty party, not Daniel, why had it taken so long for her to accept it? But that didn’t feel right either, it was all so conflicting and confusing. She was cold and tired and sorry for herself and she got to a point where she couldn’t think of anything other than somehow keeping warm and surviving until the morning.

She had sat in the cold and dark, stamping her feet to try and keep her circulation going, with hard particles of frozen snow crystals blowing around her for twenty minutes or so when a car pulled up to stop in front of the bus shelter. She had seen the lights coming from afar and expected it to whizz by, when it slowed and stopped. She almost laughed, thinking it was probably someone as completely lost as her, and stopped here looking for directions.

It was a long dark expensive car, something like a Jaguar. Marina wasn’t all that familiar with motor car designs, but she thought it was certainly an impressive-looking vehicle. The driver’s door opened and Daniel Medcalf stepped out, walked around the car towards where Marina sat and stepped just inside the shelter.

“Hello Miss Shaw,” he said, “Thought I might find you here after you went off. I’m afraid the buses don’t run out here very frequently. I could offer you a lift to the station in Worthing, of course, but that doesn’t reopen until the morning either.”

“That’s all right,” Marina replied, remaining seated and trying her hardest to stop her teeth chattering, “I’m really not in any hurry and I can wait for the first bus to come along in the morning. There doesn’t seem to be a hotel in the area, does there?”

“There is one,” he said, nodding, “but it is a long way down on the bypass. Unfortunately it is one of those that doesn’t accept guests at the door, you have to book rooms online. They’re probably all locked up by now.”

“Not to worry,” said Marina, trying her best to smile without chattering teeth, “I am quite comfortable here out of the snow, well almost out of the snow.”

“Of course you cannot stay here!” exclaimed Medcalf, “I believe this snow’s in for the rest of the night and the temperature’s dropping like a stone. If it continues snowing as heavy as it is for any length of time, I very much doubt that any buses will be running up the hills to the downs in the morning. No, you cannot possibly stay here, I wouldn’t hear of it, Miss Shaw, you must come home with me.”

“I assure you,” said Marina with some indignation, “I am not in the habit of accompanying lone male strangers to their homes in the middle of the night!”

Just then Medcalf’s mobile phone chirped its merry tune once again, to interrupt their conversation. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the screen.

“Aahh!” he said, “this should help resolve any problems you may have in accepting my family’s hospitality.” He handed the outstretched handset to Marina, which continued to chirp.

“It’s my daughter Sophie,” he said. “She’s at home, which is about five minutes’ drive away, back up the way I have just come. With any luck, she should have a nice hot meal ready for when we get home. Would you like to speak to her and inform her that I have invited you to supper?”

Marina took the phone and looked at the screen, which said “Sophie”.

“And how old is your daughter?” she asked suspiciously, remembering the photo of his young family in the book.

“She’s 19. Just back from Cambridge University for the festive holidays.” Medcalf answered. “Just press the green button, talk to her and then we can get home to the warm and comfort, out of this awful weather.”

The snow swirled around Medcalf, making his hair glisten in the glow from the phone screen. Marine clicked the button and held it to her ear.

“Hi Dad!” the clear young woman’s voice came through, “Where are you? This dinner’ll be too dry for us to eat if you chat to those old biddies very much longer!”

“H-hello, Sophie,” said Marina after clearing her dry throat. “M-my name is Miss Shaw, I was one of the old biddies at your father’s talk this evening and he has invited me to join you for supper ... at very short notice, I’m afraid. Will that be all right, Sophie?”

“Yes, er ... sure,” said the disembodied voice. “Are you still at the community hall, Miss Shaw?”

“No. We are at the bus shelter...” Marina looked at Medcalf.

He whispered, “On the south of Lindon, on the Worthing Road.”

Marina repeated the location for Sophie’s benefit.

“Oh, just a few minutes away, then,” came back Sophie’s voice, “I hope you like Spaghetti Bolognese,” she added.

“Sounds lovely,” said Marina, trying to sound as calm as she could.

“See you in a couple of minutes, then Miss Shaw.”

Marina handed over the handset to Medcalf and he said “Alright, Sweetheart? sorry about the short notice.”

He smiled and nodded automatically at his daughter’s reply, which was inaudible to Marina, then he clicked the exit button to ensure the call was terminated. He turned, stepped out of the shelter, opened the passenger door of his gorgeous car, waved his hand in that direction and slightly tilted his head deferentially.

“Your carriage awaits, Ma’am,” he said.

Marina got to her feet, gathered both her bags and stepped into the car. The door was closed behind her with a definite click which echoed in the quiet country lane. Medcalf walked around the front of the car, illuminated momentarily by the headlights. Marina shifted her bags onto her lap and remembered with some embarrassment the large knife she had secreted there so boldly and purposefully just a few hours before. It all seemed so ridiculous now, she thought as she fumbled to locate the buckle of the seat belt. Daniel Medcalf was not only a charming family man, he was also proving to be a noble knight in extremely shiny and luxurious armour, coming to the rescue of a rather old damsel in distress. No, she thought, reiterating the conclusion she had reached a while ago, Daniel Medcalf was really not at all the monster she had made him out to be at all.

The engine of the car was still running, the heater throwing out a welcome warmth, which only served to emphasise how cold Marina had become in the time she had sat inside that draughty freezing shelter. The windscreen wipers swished away the velvet snow which was coming down even harder than before. Medcalf slipped into the driver’s seat, swiftly clicked his safety belt, put the car into gear and it smoothly took off down the lane onto a roundabout some half a mile down the road. Medcalf steered the car back the way they had come, past the forlorn bus shelter, then beyond the darkened community hall and back out into open countryside again. All the time the snow fell thickly, swirling around and behind the sleek vehicle.

For a few moments there was silence between them. Then Medcalf spoke.

“Are you quite warm and comfortable?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied “It is certainly much warmer in here than in that bus shelter. I’m sorry I was rude to you when you stopped, I felt a little vulnerable back there.”

“No need to apologise, I tried to say something about the public transport around here before you left the hall but you got away too quickly for me and then the crowd of book buyers rather took me over. I couldn’t let the hospital down,” he smiled. “I am still so sure we have met before,” he hesitated and Marina tensed in trepidation of what he might say, “Would you by any chance be Miss Marina Shaw from Langstone?”

So, thought Marina, the cat was out of the bag and it was better to be embarrassed as a supposed stalker than as a miserable failed ex-assassin, so she admitted, “You are right, Daniel, and I feel embarrassed to admit it now, but we were only very slightly acquainted over thirty years ago. I hadn’t really given you a thought since, until I saw you on the local news last night. I assure you I am not some celebrity stalker.”

“Oh no, you were far too keen to avoid me all evening for me to imagine that. Besides, I was under the impression that we had become rather more than slightly acquainted friends back then. After all we saw each other for several hours every day and I clearly remember always enjoying your company. On my part I have thought about you quite often since, but never really expected to see you again. So how did you find out about tonight’s talk?” he asked, “it wasn’t mentioned on air.”

“My niece was watching the television last evening when you came on the news and she looked you up on the Internet.” Marina replied. “One of her searches brought up tonight’s meeting.”

“Ah, that must be the ‘niece Tracey’ referred to in your copy of the book?” He didn’t wait for a reply before continuing, “So you then decided to drop everything at the first opportunity and come up and see me?” he asked.

Marina could see him smiling in the pale green light reflected from the car’s many dials.

“Doesn’t look as though I really thought the process through properly,” she admitted, smiling ruefully, thinking about how casually she had embarked on this journey and with what original purpose. “I feel such a fool, I checked the times of the train and buses on the outward journey and completely failed to sort out how I was going to get home tonight. I have clearly become too used to city life, with public transport coming out of our ears, since leaving the comparative quiet of Langstone.”

“It was actually a very pleasant surprise for me to see you again, so I am really glad you came,” Daniel said. “If the weather was better and the roads therefore safer, I could have driven you back to Portsmouth in an hour or so. Anyway, we are nearly home, though, and we can get you into the warm and see you dried off and comfortable in a couple of minutes.”

The car hadn’t travelled more than a couple of miles into the normally dark but now white-covered countryside before the vehicle slowed and pulled left off the main road down a narrow lane lined with high bushes on either side. The headlights switched to main beam and showed a winding twisted road ahead and the car surged again up to cruising speed. There was snow thickly settling on the rough road surface, which clearly hadn’t been salted. Very soon the car slowed down again and another left turn took the car into a driveway with clipped hedging on the left and a large snow-covered lawn on the right, the driveway curving round to the right in front of a large, extremely impressive thatched farmhouse.

“Welcome to Underhill Grange, Miss Shaw, the family home of the Medcalfs.” said Medcalf, with an extravagant gesture with his hand.

The lights were on in an upstairs room and another lit room on the ground floor next to the impressive front porch, where outside lamps illuminated the front door. At the end of the drive to the right of the house was a large triple-width garage and the door automatically swung open upward at the car’s approach and the car drove into the shelter of a garage large enough to take three such cars side by side, and pulled up to stop next to a little yellow Mini Cooper. The lights in the garage came on automatically, too, and the garage door descended behind them to shut out the appalling weather.

“Hold on there,” he said, “and I’ll let you out.

Medcalf opened the driver’s door while she undid her seat belt and gathered up her bags. Medcalf walked around to hold the passenger door open for her, saying, slightly unnecessarily, “We’re here, Marina. We can go through to the kitchen via the back door there.”

He pointed over the snow-covered car bonnet towards the front of the vehicle and Marina could see a glass-panelled door leading to a hallway beyond. As she got out of the car she saw that the large garage door was already closing automatically, shutting out the white crystal precipitation, which was continuing to fall thickly to cover their tracks in the gravel. She pulled her bags out of the car after her, by which time Medcalf was ready to close the car door as soon as she was clear.

“It’s a relief to be out of that weather, it is already a few degrees higher in here.” said Medcalf, a huge smile on his face. He offered to take her bags, which he gripped with his left hand, then took her arm with his right and steered her towards the door he had indicated. The rear door from the garage led into an open courtyard with a covered passageway along the near side leading in turn to a glazed door into the main building, behind which was a warm, welcoming light.