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She almost panicked at the short time this gave her to finalize her plan. Barely two months. Was it long enough? It would have to be.
As September drew to a close, she ended the lease on Charity Cottage. It was not very likely the agents would find anyone to take the place at this time of year. Before handing in the keys, she had two extra sets cut, using one of the big, while you wait key-cutting places in Chester, and paying cash, so she would be able to get back into the cottage whenever she wanted. And she would want.
After this, she began to slide the name of Charity Cottage and Amberwood into conversations within the hospital network, saying offhandedly that a friend had mentioned the area, referring to it as a wonderfully peaceful part of the world, a marvellous place to heal wounds–somewhere to go if you were recovering from an illness or a bereavement or a divorce.
Or a prison sentence.
She was as sure as she could be that these carefully casual references reached people who had known Antonia and who had stayed in touch with her. Some of the clerical staff and the therapists who worked at the psychiatric clinic occasionally wrote to Antonia, and one or two of them had visited her a few times. Dr Saxon, the consultant psychiastrist who had been Antonia’s immediate boss, had certainly visited her. Donna thought Jonathan Saxon had rather fancied Antonia at one time, although if you listened to hospital gossip, you would have to believe that Jonathan Saxon had fancied most of the females in the hospital at various times. Donna did not care if he screwed every female in sight providing he knew about the marvellously peaceful cottage, and providing he mentioned it to Antonia.
Apart from the bitch’s earlier than expected release, the plan was proceeding almost exactly as Donna had hoped. The only thing she could not predict with any confidence was whether Weston would take the carefully prepared bait. Donna was not given to praying, but during those weeks there were several times when she almost did. If her plan failed at this stage she would have to start all over again. But it would not fail. It must not.
It did not fail. The timing worked, and Donna’s own psychology worked as well. Less than a week after Antonia Weston’s release, she heard from one of the therapists that the bitch was renting Charity Cottage for a few weeks.
Antonia had walked straight into the trap Donna had so painstakingly set. Now all she had to do was keep a careful watch, and move the various stages of her plan along.
She kept watch by the simple expedient of parking her car at a big new garden centre about three quarters of a mile away, and walking up to Quire House each day, going openly through the gates in the wake of ordinary visitors. It was easy to step off the main drive and take the footpath that wound through the trees. Quire had not yet entered the world of CCTV cameras, and if anyone had challenged her, Donna would have assumed the mien of a rather thick visitor, apologetic at having missed the ‘Private’ sign. But no one did.
She watched the cottage from the concealment of the trees, which was tedious, but had to be done. There was a brief alleviation of the tedium quite early on when she was able to let the large inquisitive cat into the cottage and unwrap food from the fridge for him. It only took a few moments and although it was a small incident Donna thought it would unnerve Weston. On the fourth day her patience was rewarded more substantially. Shortly before four o’clock Antonia set off across the park, carrying a large envelope. Donna waited to make sure she was not coming straight back, and then slipped into the cottage, the rope looped around her waist under her anorak.
She was wearing gloves, of course, and she had tied her hair under a scarf and then drawn up the hood of her anorak. You had only to watch a TV crime programme to know how very precise forensic science was nowadays, a single hair could be enough to identify a suspect, and she did not intend to be caught.
It was easy to pull out a kitchen chair, stand on it and tie the rope to one of the old ceiling beams near the door. Fashioning the noose was the best part of all; it looked amazingly real and startlingly sinister. She got down from the chair and dusted the seat, even though she was wearing cheap mass-produced trainers which were unlikely to be traceable. Then she returned the chair to its place. Yes, the rope looked all right, and the time of day was a bonus: it was nicely dark–that oddly macabre dusk-light you got at this time of year. She had closed the curtains so Weston would come into an unlit room.
Donna moved the rope back and forth experimentally. It was tied quite tightly to the beam and the movement pulled on the old ceiling timbers, making them creak softly. It was quite a spooky sound, and it brought a forgotten memory with it: the memory of how the kitchen joists had always creaked in just that way when someone walked across the floor of the bedroom directly overhead, and of how Don, before that last summer, sometimes pretended the cottage was haunted and made up scary stories about ghosts. There was definitely something in the far corner of the kitchen, near the door, he used to say. You had only to go in there to feel it. Occasionally he sounded perfectly serious about this, but Donna knew the cottage was not haunted, of course. Even so, it was still quite eerie to stand down here and hear the ceiling beams creak as the rope swayed gently back and forth…
You did not abandon a plan you had spent months putting together and years polishing, but nor did you close your mind against an improvement. Donna gave a final look round the room, checked she had locked the garden door, pocketed the key and went quickly out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
It was a bit of a gamble to hide in the cottage when Weston came in and saw the noose, but Donna did not think it was much of one. She thought Weston would be so frightened when the rope began to move–apparently of its own accord, but really, of course, from the pressure on the joists overhead–that she would not search the cottage by herself.