Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(42)
Kitchen and dining room led off the entrance hall on the raised ground floor, spare room, laundry room, and bathroom below; the living room spanned the second floor, opening onto a wide balcony, the main bedroom and en-suite bathroom above.
Alex Peterson unfastened the sliding glass doors that led onto the balcony and stepped outside. For a moment, his body shivered deeply and he reached forward to steady himself, and Resnick, watching from the comfort of a brown leather chair, saw it as a pose and wondered why he felt the need to impress.
Normally a matter that would have been looked into by a junior officer, at this stage at least, Resnick had come out to the house in response to Hannah’s mounting distress about her friend, and from a sneaking interest of his own. There had still been no call from Jane, no explanation; the routine inquiries to hospitals and the like had come up blank.
Peterson was wearing mid-blue trousers and a beige V-neck sweater, deck shoes, sockless, on his feet. His hair was suitably awry and he hadn’t shaved. Blue eyes, pale, pale blue, showed their concern.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you could have forgotten?” Resnick said. “Someone she was going to visit? A friend where she might have stayed?”
“And never phoned?”
“Isn’t it possible she forgot? Simply didn’t think?”
“Inspector—Charlie—you’ve got to understand. Jane and I, we make a point of staying in touch.” He sat on the settee, angled away from the side wall. “We’re very close.”
“The day school,” Resnick said, “you didn’t go?”
Peterson allowed himself a smile. “It’s no secret—we talked about it that night at dinner—I don’t think time spent on that kind of thing’s particularly worthwhile. Dress it up whichever way you like, they weren’t exactly going to be discussing Othello or Madame Bovary. But, no, it was Jane’s day. She’d worked hard to see it succeed. I didn’t want to intrude.”
“You think that’s how she would have seen it, if you’d gone along, an intrusion?”
Peterson touched fingertips to the nape of his neck, below the neat line of hair. “Sometimes, and quite wrongly, Jane felt as if her work wasn’t really important. She’d seen me build up a successful practice, become, I think it’s fair to say, something of an authority, whereas she …” He leaned forward, earnest in his stare. “No matter how much I encouraged her to think otherwise, Jane always undervalued what she did.”
“Does,” Resnick said quietly. “What she does.”
“Of course. And yesterday, I wanted her to have all the glory. Prove to herself what she could achieve on her own.” With a swing of his legs, Peterson was back on his feet. “More coffee?”
Resnick shook his head. “This list of friends,” he said, “family. People Jane might have been in contact with. If you could check through it once more, there might be someone who didn’t occur to you first time round.” He looked at his watch. “I dare say you’ll be making some more calls yourself. The next hour or so, you’ll hear something, I’m sure.”
At the door, Peterson shook Resnick’s hand. “Thanks for coming. Handling things yourself. I appreciate that, I really do.”
Jane’s parents, Tim and Eileen Harker, lived in Wetherby, her father the head teacher of a local primary school, her mother an ex-midwife who baked cakes for the Women’s Institute and Mothers’ Union, took her turn staffing the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, and wrote impassioned letters at the behest of Amnesty International. There was an elder brother, James, who worked as a systems analyst and lived with his wife and three children in Portsmouth, and two sisters. One older, Margaret, married to a sheep farmer in the Dales; the youngest, Diane, unmarried, lived with her two young children in Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast.
By noon, Resnick had spoken to all save Diane, whose number rang and rang unanswered. They were perturbed, confused, unable to supply a satisfactory explanation. The most recent to have spoken to Jane was her mother, who had talked to her on Thursday evening and done her best to allay her daughter’s fears about the event she was organizing.
“She was distressed, then?” Resnick said.
“Worried about what might happen, yes. Oh, you know, the usual things—what if one of the speakers didn’t arrive, or the film broke down, or … well, you would have to know Jane to understand she could work herself into a lather about any little thing. Usually, without good reason.”
“And you think it was this day school that was upsetting her, rather than anything else?”
“Why, yes.”
“She didn’t seem concerned about anything more personal, Mrs. Harker?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Nothing between herself and Alex? No big rows, disagreements, something she might have confided to you as her mother?”
Eileen Harker’s voice stiffened. “Had my daughter felt the need to confide in me, Inspector, I doubt that I would betray that confidence unless I thought it truly necessary. But let me assure you, nothing of the kind passed between us.”
Resnick held the next question for a moment longer on his tongue. “Your relationship with your daughter, Mrs. Harker, would you characterize it as close?”
“I am her mother, Inspector.”