Donna went around the far side of the bungalow, skirted the edge of the lawn, hopped over the low wall, and was back out on the street and walking towards her car.
She made herself an enormous greasy fry-up when she got back to the flat, and drank most of a bottle of wine. After this she went to bed, and slept until the alarm woke her at half past seven. The radio came on with the alarm, and the seven thirty news contained an item about the violent murder of Richard Weston, the wheelchair-bound brother of a doctor of psychiatry at a big North London hospital.
Donna stared at the radio. The musician had not been Weston’s husband or boyfriend at all. He had been her brother. From out of the confused tumble of her thoughts, she heard the newsreader say that the body of a second man–believed to have been the murderer–had been found next to the body, and that Dr Antonia Weston, was being held for questioning in connection with this second death.
It was only then that Donna realized Don had not come home last night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Antonia was grateful when a thin morning sunlight eventually filtered in through the cottage’s windows, because the night had seemed endless. She got up and went into the kitchen, discovering Raffles composedly seated on the windowsill outside. Invited in, he padded round the kitchen a couple of times, paused rather dubiously at the corner Antonia thought of as the haunted corner, then came back to accept a saucer of milk.
‘So you know about the ghost, do you?’ said Antonia to him. ‘But it certainly wasn’t a ghost who left that grisly hangman’s noose here for me to find yesterday.’
She waited until nine o’clock and then phoned Jonathan Saxon, who had better be told that she had used his name and department to the local police yesterday. It was annoying to find that she ended in telling him more than she had intended.
‘So there’s some weird character playing sick jokes,’ he said, thoughtfully.
‘Yes, and I don’t know if I need a psychic investigator or a psychiatrist, or even a private detective. I don’t even know if I simply need a smack in the face.’
‘I don’t know about the psychic investigator or the private detective,’ he said. ‘But the psychiatrist we can manage. Shall I come up there to hold your hand?’
For a perilous moment, Antonia thought she might burst into tears. So she said, very sharply, ‘Certainly not. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand.’
‘Antonia,’ he said, with extreme patience, ‘my clinic finishes early tomorrow–I could drive up then and stay until the following day. You can pour it all out and have a beautiful psychotic crisis.’
‘It really isn’t—’
‘And I’ll behave like a maiden aunt,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’ll come to the cottage, and we’ll go out to dinner somewhere. But I don’t need to stay at the cottage; if there’s a pub in the village I’ll book in there for the night. Does that persuade you?’
‘There is a pub in the village,’ said Antonia slowly.
‘Ah. Oh well, I was afraid there would be. But you’re calling the tune, so the pub it shall be, although I will continue to hope, like a languishing nineteenth-century swain. You can give me a lock of your hair to wear next to my heart. But before giving me that, give me the directions to your haunted cottage–Yes, I have got a pen, I’m in my office, what do you expect?’
Antonia gave suitable directions.
‘OK, I’ve got all that. And I’ll be with you tomorrow evening as soon after six as I can manage. All right?’
‘All right,’ said Antonia and rang off. An apology to Dr Toy and Professor Remus for yesterday’s melodrama had better be part of today’s agenda–she would walk across to Quire and do that now, before she got cold feet.