My Name is Eva(62)
Part VII
Any small river found in garden (4,6,6)
56
Evelyn, 14 March 1986
When Will There Be Bad News?
She listened to the news as often as possible, tuning in to the lunchtime bulletin on Radio 4, then again at six o’clock and finally the ten o’clock news on television. Every morning she drove to the village shop for the Daily Telegraph, a pint of milk, some bread and maybe a Danish pastry if she was feeling in need of a treat. It wasn’t a new habit; she’d done this for years and always told the girls in the shop she couldn’t do without the mental exercise of her daily crossword. But now this routine had added significance as she resolved to maintain an unchanged regular programme. And when he was finally missed, what would come first? A bulletin on the airwaves, a report in the press or perhaps, more ominously, an urgent knocking at her door?
Days passed, then weeks, then finally one Monday she caught a brief snatch on the one o’clock news: ‘Concern is growing for the whereabouts of Colonel Stephen Robinson, who has not been seen at his London flat since the middle of February. Police are asking for anyone with information to contact their local station immediately.’
This is it, she thought. Now it begins. The next day, there was a small article on the third page of the newspaper. Amusing that, his picture on page three. It was an old photograph of him, taken, she guessed, in about 1950. It was a likeness, but not very much like him in later years, although she had recognised him instantly. The report mentioned his involvement in post-war interrogation, the court martial at which he had been cleared of any wrongdoing, a brief, vague mention of his subsequent activities, which she took to mean he was still with MI6, and then finally one sentence that she hoped would put off any investigators: ‘His bank card was last used in Lymington, Hampshire, on the evening of Sunday, 10 February. Police are investigating the possibility that Colonel Robinson was intending to visit the Isle of Wight or sail over to France. His passport is also missing. Foul play is not suspected at this stage.’
Evelyn folded the paper and turned to the back page, where the crossword always enticed her with its blank white squares, waiting for her quick mind and fast pen. She smoothed the page and sat back, stirring her coffee and mentally checking all the steps she had taken. She had been careful, hadn’t she?
On her return from Lymington that night, she had emptied his wallet and separated the contents. She had cut the plastic cards into small pieces, then scattered them in various holes she had dug around the grounds. She had removed the keys from his key ring and buried each item deep in a separate spot. If anyone had seen her digging on the edges of the lawns, they wouldn’t have thought it strange. She was always planting new specimens of snowdrop and narcissus or lifting rare bulbs in the garden and surrounding grounds.
The train tickets, wallet, driving licence, passport and handkerchief were burned in a spectacular bonfire to rid the garden of the last of the winter debris, along with a man’s padded coat, a tweed jacket with patched elbows, some motheaten clothes and shoes with very worn soles. A sprinkle of lawnmower oil on the pyre always ensured a rapidly consuming blaze and she had raked the ashes, just to be sure. And the small amount of cash from the wallet and his pockets she added to the church collection the following Sunday, thinking that was probably something the miserly bastard would never have done in his entire life. Can You forgive me? she asked in silence, as she added the money to the plate, her inner plea echoing those she had made many times in this hallowed place.
Yes, she was sure she had tidied up all the loose ends. Yet one could never be sure, could one? She could not afford to be complacent. She had no alibi for that particular Sunday, but then none of her neighbours were close by and she often saw nobody, apart from the staff in the village shop, from one week to the next. It would seem more out of character if she had suddenly begun to fill her days with activities she didn’t normally undertake. No, continuing with her ordinary, solitary routine was less likely to arouse suspicion.
Evelyn sat at her scrubbed kitchen table, stirring a cup of Earl Grey tea and gazing out at the trees with their slight haze of fresh green buds above the clusters of primroses. From this time on, she knew she would rarely have visitors. She could manage to run Kingsley with an occasional visit from Sharon to help in the house and maybe she should ask Jim to come back a couple of times a year, just to prune the high beech hedges and clip the pollarded hornbeam. It wouldn’t do to let the gardens become completely neglected when they’d always been such a source of pride for her and her parents before her, but she could manage to mow the lawns herself, with the help of her sturdy Westwood tractor.
She cut herself a slice of the ginger cake she’d bought at the WI market a few days earlier. They always had such good produce, quiches, bakes and preserves, and it was important to continue maintaining her normal routine. She could still carry on going to the monthly meetings of the Garden Club, show her face at the twice-yearly village jumble sales, help with the church flowers, make a spiced parsnip soup to serve at the annual Lent lunches in the village hall and help with the teas at the summer garden party at the rectory. With all these mundane, normal activities, if anyone ever came asking awkward questions, her acquaintances would all say what nonsense, she was a perfectly nice, ordinary woman of pensionable age, who kept herself to herself and was a good neighbour. No one would ever point a finger at her and say she was a cold-blooded murderer.