* * *
Helena awoke to the ringing of the doorbell and for a moment she lay there, bewildered, wondering where she was, then it all came back. As the bell rang once more she still didn’t move waiting for her father to answer it, but it rang again and this time she swung herself out of bed and padded to the window.
The caller had given up. He was walking down the drive with a purposeful step, a tall, dark-haired man, broad-shouldered, trim-hipped, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.
She opened the window to call to him and then thought better of it. After what her father had told her the previous night the less they had to do with strangers the better, and she shrank back into the shadows.
But he’d heard the window catch being lifted. He stopped and turned and even though he couldn’t see her he called up, ‘Could you come down to the front door, please? I need to speak to you urgently.’
There didn’t seem any point in cowering out of sight if he knew she was there, so showing herself she leaned forward and said, ‘I’m listening.’
He frowned.
‘I don’t want to tell all the neighbourhood. It’s about your father.’
‘Yes. I’ll bet it is!’ she cried. ‘If you don’t clear off immediately I’m going to call the police.’
‘I am from the police,’ he said patiently, with the feeling that this was going to be even worse than he’d imagined, ‘and I’m also your next-door neighbour. My name is Blake Pemberton. Will you, please, come downstairs? I have some grave news concerning your father.’
‘Hold on!’ Helena cried.
If it was a hoax her father would be in the dining room, having his breakfast, but if that was the case, why hadn’t he answered the door?
He wasn’t there. But a scribbled note was. It said, ‘Gone for a stroll along the golf links. Will cook you breakfast when I get back.’
As she stood with the note in her hand Helena could see the man’s shadow through the glass of the front door, and with dread in her heart she went to open it. Not knowing if it was the right thing to do, but with the certainty that if something had happened to her dad she had to know.
Her first thought as the door swung back was that he didn’t look like a thug. There was nothing shifty about the level gaze meeting hers and he was making no move to come any nearer.
‘I realise from your manner that you are wary of me for some reason,’ he was saying, ‘but I do assure you I mean you no harm. It was true what I said. I am with the police. I’m a doctor, working with them. They were called to the golf links a short time ago as the body of a man had been found by a passer-by and they got in touch with me in my position as police surgeon.
‘Sadly it was too late for me to help him. There was nothing I could do. But I did recognise the man as your father and offered to come to tell you what had happened. I am so very sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.’
If her face hadn’t been so transfixed with horror she would have been beautiful, he thought. High cheekbones, a sweetly curving mouth and green eyes beneath a tangled russet mop.
Her pyjamas weren’t the last word in glamour, soft cotton with no frills or flounces, but those were details scarcely registering as she croaked, ‘Oh, no! So they got to him after all. How could they?’
As Blake eyed her questioningly she began to crumple and he caught her as she fell. As she wept in his arms he asked above the crown of her head, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Helena,’ she sobbed. ‘Helena Harris.’
‘So tell me, Helena,’ he coaxed gently, ‘what did you mean by what you just said?’
He felt a shudder go through her and silently thanked the providence that had sent him to her in such a moment of distress.
‘My dad was the only witness to a shooting on a garage forecourt some months ago in the town where we lived. He testified in court and after that received threats. So the police took him into the witness protection programme and moved him out here.
‘He wrote and told me he’d moved but didn’t explain why until I came home yesterday. I’ve been in Australia, nursing, for the last twelve months. But it was all a waste of time, wasn’t it?’ she sobbed. ‘They found him in spite of everything.’
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘It wasn’t like that, Helena. Your father died from natural causes. He had a massive heart attack out there on the golf course and there was no one about to help him, Though I doubt it would have made any difference if there had been. So, you see, there is nothing to fear. If you’d like to get dressed I’ll drive you to where they’ve taken him.’
‘He wasn’t murdered, then,’ she whispered.
‘No. There were no signs of injury on his body. It’s my job as police surgeon to look out for that sort of thing, and there was nothing. But there was evidence of a massive cardiac arrest.’
‘I’m so sorry that I was so dubious of you when you came, but you can understand why, can’t you?’ she asked, moving out of his arms as if she’d suddenly realised where she was.
She looked sad and very vulnerable and yet there was a sort of quiet dignity about her as she stood before him in the sensible pyjamas.
‘So go and get dressed,’ he suggested again, ‘and while you’re gone I’m going to make you a cup of hot sweet tea.’
Helena nodded mutely and padded back up the stairs. When she’d gone he put the kettle on and then stood deep in thought. His expression was grim. The girl and her father had been traumatised because the man had done his duty as an honest citizen, and who was to say that the heart attack hadn’t been a direct result of the position he’d found himself in?
There’d been no mention of her having a mother. He hoped that she did have someone to turn to, and as she sipped the tea that he’d made Blake asked carefully, ‘Do you have anyone to help you through this sad time? Brothers, sisters or any other relative you can rely on?’
Helena shook her head. ‘No. I’m afraid not. I’m an only child and both my parents were the same, so I’ve no aunts, uncles or cousins.’
She was calm now but pinched-looking and drained of all colour. When she’d drunk the tea she got to her feet.
‘Will you, please, take me to where my dad is?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course. My car is the black Volvo outside the house next door. Here’s the key. Go and settle yourself inside and if you’ll give me a door key I’ll lock up behind us.’
Helena looked around her and shuddered again.
‘Yes, please. This place feels spooky to me after what Dad told me last night.’
He couldn’t leave her in that house tonight, Blake was thinking as they drove to the hospital mortuary. She was having a horrendous homecoming. Yet what was the alternative? Would she be willing to sleep in his spare room?
They hardly knew each other. She might think spending the night in the house of a stranger even more nerve-stretching than the thought of who might be lurking. When he got back he would impress upon the police to make public the fact that the witness in the recent trial was dead, so that if the friends of the convicted man had been trying to find James Harris, they would now give up.
* * *
Helena clung to Blake’s hand when they were shown her father’s body, but she managed to hold back the tears when a doctor came to inform her that there would have to be a post-mortem.
* *