Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder Read Online Free PDF

homework,’ Helen said, ‘but I’m going to bed now.’
    She’s changed, Veronica thought. She’s grown up. She takes after her grandmother, not me. Everything’s changing.
    Fanny was asleep on a crumpled bed, surrounded by soft toys and pop posters. Veronica straightened the duvet and stroked her forehead. She felt a routine easy guilt. It was their fault Fanny was so difficult. Eleanor was right. She was too muddled and incapable to organize time for her family. We’re alike, Fanny and me, she thought. We’re both failures. Then she shut the bedroom door and forgot the girl, as if she had done duty enough by feeling guilt.
    In her own room Veronica sat and looked at her reflection in the mirror. I’m weak, she thought. I let things happen to me. I’m not clever enough to stand up for myself. She knew she was too dependent on Eleanor but could do nothing about it. Even after her marriage she had needed her mother. In one sense their life together as a family in the flat over Richard’s studio had been the happiest time of her life, but she had missed her mother’s support and advice. She had persuaded Richard to move back to Gorse Hill and to join in the hotel venture.
    ‘She’ll dominate you again,’ he had said. ‘She’ll rule your life for you.’
    But that, after all, was what Veronica had wanted.
    So now Eleanor’s peculiar behaviour was like a threat to her own precarious stability. She needed her mother to be sane and decisive. She would rather be alone than face the mood swings, the uncertainty of her mother’s behaviour, the haunted look on her face, the night-time prowls on the hill. Richard was trying to protect her, to laugh away Eleanor’s irrationality, but she knew something was going on which she could not understand. She could not explain her fears to George Palmer-Jones. He was obviously charmed by her mother, as most men were, and could not contemplate her madness.
    There were footsteps on the stairs outside, Richard came into the room and Veronica turned round to face him.
    ‘How was Mother?’ she asked. ‘She seemed quite well at supper.’ Richard shrugged and Veronica thought: He won’t tell me the
    truth. He’s afraid of hurting me.
‘She was well enough,’ he said. ‘She didn’t talk about the birds
    at all tonight. She wants the Open Day to be a magnificent success.
    Just like old Eleanor.’
He smiled but she knew he was lying.
    The next day Helen woke early, but there were already people in the garden, setting up trestle tables, marking out the sites for stalls. She heard her grandmother’s voice and saw Eleanor standing on the lawn, showing vans and cars and people where to go. She was dressed in brown trousers and a shirt and her hair was tied up in a scarf. She was waving her arms and shouting and might have been the director of a film. Helen dressed and ran down into the garden to offer help. She admired her grandmother’s energy and wanted to be part of the proceedings. She thought it would make the time pass quickly before she saw Laurie again.
    It would be another fine day, even warmer than the previous one. She felt happy, optimistic. Even when the heavy dew on the grass soaked her shoes she did not care. It was going to be a brilliant day. She stood where her grandmother had instructed under the cedar tree on the front lawn and checked the people who were running stalls against a list. When a dark, insignificant man got out of a blue van and said he was there to work for Mr Fenn, she smiled at the coincidence of the vehicle but took no real notice. There were a lot of blue vans and everyone knew her grandmother was making a fuss about nothing.
    Helen was outside all morning and watched with wonder as the scene took shape. This was going to be no glorified jumble sale. Eleanor had planned something more impressive than that. There were to be displays of crafts, a sheepdog trial, morris dancers. There was an inflatable for the children to bounce on and a Punch