We all need to be sure of our roots. I must set about tracing my birth mother.’
‘Seriously?’
His voice rose in surprise. As if alerted to their presence, the heron drew back its long neck and took flight. Within an instant it had disappeared among the trees.
‘Yes. It’s ridiculous, this fear of rejection. If she doesn’t want to know me, fine. I’ll survive. But I’d hate to think she was yearning to hear from me, and I froze her out of my life because she made one mistake a long, long time ago.’
‘Why the sudden change of heart?’
‘There’s a bond between parent and child, it’s unique.’ Her voice was dreamy, her eyes far away. ‘The blood- tie.’
This was precisely how he felt about his own father, and why he needed to learn more about the man’s life, what he was really like. Yet her words didn’t ring true. Whenever they’d talked about this before, Miranda had been resolute. The words, the sentiment, didn’t seem to belong to her. She’d been talked round. But not by him. And certainly not by Louise.
A phrase of Miranda’s came back into his mind as they set off back to the cottage.
‘You’ve talked to someone about this?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’m interested, that’s all.’
‘As it happens, I have had a conversation…’
‘With Oliver Cox?’
She stared. ‘Right first time. How on earth did you figure that out?’
‘You were chatting with him in the bar at The Heights. He persuaded you, but what I’m wondering is — how did he manage it?’ He closed his eyes, breathing in her perfume. ‘Was it because Oliver was adopted too? He understood the dilemma better than the rest of us.’
‘He didn’t want to talk about it to begin with. I found it so encouraging when he urged me to trace my mum that I asked him outright if he was adopted. Typical, huh, putting my foot right in my mouth?’
‘What did he say?’
‘At first he backed right off. He’s lovely, but he’s easily knocked off balance. He actually denied it, would you believe? Said I’d put two and two together and made five.’
His face was very close to hers, but he’d shut his eyes. He was picturing her at the bar, determined not to let Oliver off the hook. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, I’d had a couple of large glasses of wine and I’d talked him into having one himself, even though he said he never drank on duty because it soon went to his head. I suppose the booze loosened both our tongues. He tried to brush me off, change the subject, make a joke of the whole thing. But I begged him to be straight with me, told him how much it mattered.’
‘And in the end he gave in.’ That was what people did with Miranda. It was always easier to surrender than to fight.
‘Yes, he finally admitted he was adopted. Even then he said he didn’t want to make it out to be such a big deal.’
‘Did he tell you about his own experience?’
‘I dragged it out of him. He said he was riven with doubt about tracing his blood-family. Once he’d dropped out of uni, he hadn’t been able to settle to anything. As a last resort, he decided to look for his real mother. He was frightened of how she would react, his dread of rejection was as intense as mine. But when at last he found her, it changed his life. No question, he told me, it was the best thing he’d ever done.’
‘Where did he meet his mother?’
‘No idea. He clammed up after that and I didn’t want to make any more of a nuisance of myself. I was grateful for his honesty.’
They were taking a short cut across the grassy area that he’d cleared. Leaving behind the yew and the monkey puzzles and the weeping willow. He was determined that they shouldn’t become trapped in the maze of the Quillers’ despair. As he walked, he was delving into the undergrowth of useless information in his mind, striving to make out what lay beneath.
He wasn’t sure of the precise chronology, but from what Hannah and Bel Jenner had told him, two things had happened shortly before Warren Howe’s murder. Oliver Cox had turned up in Old Sawrey, and Chris Gleave had disappeared. What if a young man turned up on their doorstep one fine morning and announced that Roz was his mother? If so, then judging by her age, she could only have been fourteen or fifteen when she gave birth. Chris and Roz didn’t have kids; if Chris was incapable of being a father, how might he react if a stranger blundered into their cosy little marriage and revealed something his wife had never got up the nerve to mention? He was a sensitive soul, self-consciously artistic. Perhaps he might run away and hide.
‘What do you think?’ Miranda asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘You’re miles away, aren’t you, darling? Not very flattering. I was saying, if we’re going to ask those garden designers to give this place a makeover, perhaps we should take a few photographs so that we can remember how it used to be. Before and after shots.’
‘I want to keep the basic layout intact. The garden’s odd, but…’
‘You like it as it is?’
He groped for the right words. ‘It deserves…respect.’
‘Darling, it’s a garden, not a shrine.’
‘Even so.’
‘All right, but we need a new theme. And lots more colour. It’s drab and dark here. Except for the foxgloves. They’re starting to die off, but they are so pretty in full bloom.’
Daniel gazed at the purple flowers shaped like bells. The means by which Jacob and Alice Quiller had killed themselves.
‘You know their leaves are poisonous?’
She laughed. ‘Typical. You always have to look on the dark side.’
‘Sorry. You’re right, we need a fresh start. As for a theme — how about celebrating a new life?’
She smiled with almost childlike delight. ‘Wonderful.’
The scent of the roses was heady, butterflies were fluttering to and fro. A picture came into Daniel’s mind. Jacob Quiller bent over the ground, grim in his determination to convey a confession through his work. Back- breaking labour, but an escape from sitting inside by the fire, while his guts churned in despair. No such escape for Alice, as the clock ticked on towards the anniversary of John’s passing, the date they had fixed for ending it all. Both of them were obsessed; Jacob with macabre garden patterns, Alice with the loss of her only son. It was on Alice, of whom he knew so little, that his thoughts lingered. The housemaid who became mistress of the little cottage in the clearing, proud mother of a young man who left his native shores to fight for Queen and country, never to return.
The love between mother and child could break down all restraints and scrape away the coat of varnish that protects from raw emotion, rage, and violence. Bees buzzed in the background, Miranda ducked her head to smell the flowers, and Daniel tossed possibilities around in his mind.
Suppose Oliver had not only found his long-lost mother, but his father as well. Who was a more likely candidate to impregnate a young girl in the village than the late and unlamented Warren Howe? Consider it from Chris Gleave’s perspective. What if he was driven by jealousy, what if he hated the man who had given Roz a son, when he had not?
It might add up to a motive for murder.
‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ Hannah said.
‘You’re wrong, ma’am.’
She bent forward. ‘Ma’am? What happened to Hannah and Nick?’
‘Sorry.’ A threadbare smile. ‘You’re wrong, Hannah. You need to know this. What you do with the information is up to you.’
She poured two cups of coffee, marvelling at the steadiness of her hand while her stomach was
