The Body in Belair Park

by Alice Castle

  She scrutinised her hand. Well, that was easy. Null points, as they always said to Britain these days in the Eurovision Song Contest. She rapidly moved a card or two from suit to suit and, hey presto, she was organised. She looked up, pleased with her work, only to find three sets of eyes focussed on her expectantly.

  ‘What?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows at her mother.

  ‘You’re the dealer,’ Wendy hissed.

  ‘Eh?’ said Beth.

  ‘That means you bid first.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was easy, Beth thought, contemplating her duff hand. ‘No bid.’

  ‘Use the cards,’ Wendy gestured at the box at Beth’s elbow.

  With difficulty, Beth fished out a little green no-bid marker and put it on the table in front of her. But Wendy obviously either had a great hand or was desperate to play, and ended up pledging to make ten tricks out of the total of thirteen. Beth was dummy.

  As soon as the player on her right led a card, Beth put down her hand for Wendy to use as best she could. As the deeply unimpressive twos, threes, and fours appeared, one after another, Wendy’s expression got more and more thunderous, though she said nothing but a very clipped, ‘Thank you, partner.’

  Even a novice like Beth could see that the resultant play was nothing short of a massacre. Beth wondered why on earth Wendy had decided to bid on, with no support from her partner. But it turned out that Beth’s hand had been quite unusual.

  ‘Only you could have a Yarborough, Beth,’ Wendy snapped, when they were tallying up the points after the rout.

  Beth looked all around her. ‘A what? Where?’

  Wendy tutted. ‘That’s what they call a hand without a single point. Not even a ten.’

  The man on Beth’s right explained kindly, ‘It’s named after the second Earl of Yarborough, in the nineteenth century. It’s said that he placed a constant bet so that, when he had a hand with any points in it, he’d win one pound, but when he got a point-free hand, he would pay out one thousand. Over the years, he made a fortune.’

  ‘So it’s lucky then, really?’ asked Beth brightly.

  ‘Depends whether you actually want to do well at bridge or not,’ said Wendy drily.

  Beth, feeling chastened, wondered again why she’d ever agreed to do this for her mother. There were probably more useful ways she could spend her time. Though, she admitted to herself, this might be her only way of finding the poisoner. She looked over her shoulder. They were sitting at Wendy’s usual table, which meant Beth had her back to the room. She couldn’t spend the session peering behind her, but she was determined to try and get a good look at her fellow competitors when she could.

  There was a sea of ashy heads at the six, no, seven little green-covered tables. Blue rinses seemed to be out these days. Beth remembered when she’d been young that old ladies had often had blue, pink, or even purple coiffures, making their curls look like candyfloss. Today, there were just a couple of unlikely platinum coiffures shining out against the muted white walls and toning with the beautiful honey-coloured parquet.

  Twenty-eight people, almost half of them men, and they all looked very unlikely poisoners, mused Beth. Just then came a dry cough. It was Wendy. Everyone was waiting for her to put down her card.

  Honestly, there was another mad rule every time you turned round in bridge, thought Beth later with a mental shrug. It was almost as if those playing had nothing to do with their time but make up arcane conventions just to catch out unwary newbies.

  But, watching Wendy a little later, when she seemed to be making all the tricks for a change, Beth realised that her mother looked a lot perkier than she had for ages. Since Alfie had died, in fact. Whoever had done for him had really knocked the wind out of Wendy’s sails – even before trying to bump her off as well. Losing her bridge partner, when all the other pairings in the room seemed so settled, was a blow which had hit Wendy really hard. You could ask for someone to bid for you, if you had no regular arrangement, but that meant relying on other people to help out all the time. Beth could see why Wendy would prefer a partner – even her daughter.

  And that, Beth suddenly realised, was as good a motive as any. Yes, people usually killed for what she thought of as the three Ss – silver, sex, or silence. Silver meant any kind of money; not just weird collections of five pence pieces, though they’d do if there were enough. Sex also covered a multitude of sins – adultery, abuse, even avarice in the sense of coveting a neighbour’s ass. Silence spoke for itself – or rather, it didn’t. But would anyone kill just to spoil someone else’s fun?

  ‘Beth? Honestly, I’m so sorry,’ Wendy apologised to her neighbours on either side. It was time to bid again. Wendy would have been a lot crosser, but having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat despite Beth’s consistently terrible cards (which Wendy seemed to see as a personal affront rather than a random selection which Beth had had nothing to do with choosing), her mood was buoyant.

  Beth picked her cards up with very low expectations, but the first one she saw was an ace. She fanned them all out and was confronted by a rogue’s gallery of kings, jacks, and aces, and even a winking queen. She started counting points, but her head was soon swimming. Twenty-three? Could that be right? And what on earth was she supposed to do now? This felt like an onerous responsibility, as though she’d been asked to babysit a royal family and prevent, single-handedly, any sort of coup seeking to curtail its power or, even worse, chop off all these crowned heads.

  Twenty minutes later, she’d made all the tricks but one, and was hoping for high praise from Wendy. But as the tables all around them broke up for much-needed tea, Beth sensed that she’d let her mother down badly in some obscure way.

  ‘Wasn’t that great? Twelve tricks!’ she couldn’t help chirping.

  ‘Mm,’ Wendy said repressively, and then spent the entire break filling her in on where she’d gone wrong. It turned out her mother did actually know a surprising amount about bridge, no matter what other members of the club might say. How much went above or below the line, what you got for extra tricks, who was vulnerable and who wasn’t… It seemed there was a separate rule for every minute you were playing, and lots left over to cogitate on afterwards. No wonder it took up so much of Wendy’s life.

  Beth was pretty sure it wasn’t going to encroach on her own free time. She couldn’t deny that she’d felt a thrill when fanning out that marvellous hand of colourful faces. That, she imagined, was what kept bridge players ploughing on through the mediocre scores and lost rubbers, the dodgy bids and the misplayed cards. Chance was, indeed, a fine thing – when it came to call.

  Through Wendy’s break-time pep talk, Beth kept an eye on the other players. Was one of them even now plotting more devilry? Or should she be digging around on the allotments for answers? Now that Alfie had been revealed as a much more lacklustre gardener than people had thought, with his shameful plastic secret, she was pretty sure that the answer didn’t lie with the Open Garden brigade.

  And everyone here seemed benign, too, she thought, her eye sweeping over the nodding heads of the players. Her gaze rested on the back of a very well-coiffed lady, one of the couple of blondes. Not a hair was out of place, and her outfit of Chanel-like jacket and skirt was very smart indeed – maybe a little too formal for something like this? It was a social event as much as anything, Beth realised, as the chatting reached cocktail party levels of intensity and snippets of conversation swirled around her. ‘She’ll be going to the College School next year – assuming she gets in, the exams are ferocious now, not like they were in my day…’ ‘Of course, my son is so employable, it won’t take him a moment to find something else. How they’ll manage without him, I can’t imagine. Ridiculous, but he felt he had to do the decent thing…’

  Soon they were all trooping back to their seats. Beth was, by this time, frankly exhausted. The effort required to keep counting to thirteen – to make sure she didn’t lose track of the trumps – sounded like something any schoolchild could man
age, but in practice it took more concentration than she’d used for quite a while. After this, it would be a great relief to get back to any of her own work – even the filing.

  If bridge, like football, could ever be said to be a game of two halves, the second part of Beth’s session was a complete fiasco. And in the final round, she made the unpardonable error of revoking.

  Wendy threw up her hands in horror. Their opponents, while icily polite, insisted on calling over Deidre MacBride as director, to give the judgement of Solomon on the matter. And Beth found herself having to concede two extra tricks to the other side, as well as all those that she’d already lost through ordinary incompetence. It was no real surprise when their contract ended up floundering like the Titanic shortly after meeting the iceberg.

  ‘Well! That was… quite something,’ said her mother, as Beth reached for her handbag. Their opponents had already thanked them courteously for the thousand or so points Beth had handed them on a platter, and taken their leave.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Beth mumbled, thinking that at least she’d never be asked to fill in again.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Wendy said, quite brightly under the circumstances. ‘I’m sure you’ll do much better next time.’

  Beth’s heart sank like a stone, but some good had come of the afternoon. Wendy left Belair House as though she was walking on air, the last traces of her poor-me poisoning persona wiped away by an afternoon doing what she loved most. She’d wafted round saying her goodbyes, fixing up more games, and generally acting as though she owned the bridge world – in a way she hadn’t done since going into hospital.

  If nothing else, Beth was definitely helping with her rehabilitation. Was it at too great a cost to her amour propre, she wondered? Or would she actually get the bridge bug herself? Stranger things had happened. Occasionally.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Beth woke up on Saturday morning, overjoyed that it was the weekend at last. Ben had been looking a little grey about the gills – the punishing new routine at Wyatt’s was taking a toll. At his age, he was used to school hours. But there must be quite a difference in what was now going on during Ben’s lessons. The Village Primary had been all about inclusiveness, the growth mindset, and gentle encouragement. Beth had a suspicion that had all gone out of the window, to be replaced by a first-past-the-post mentality which, although a bit depressing, was probably more aligned with the realities of life in modern Dulwich.

  So, Ben would be at his leisure – but she realised, with a stab of anxiety, she would be scurrying about just as much as ever. Thanks to her mother, Beth would be hosting quite a complex lunch party tomorrow. She was looking forward to seeing her brother, but the dynamic between him and Harry was a tad strange. They had hardly met, thanks to Harry’s work schedule and Josh’s rigorous avoidance of Britain. But on the few occasions when they had coincided, there had been an odd jostling for Beth’s attention which, though it amused her a little, she was pretty sure she was going to find tiresome if it spread over too many hours of her precious off-duty time.

  There was also the fact that she had to cobble together a menu and source the ingredients. Normally, Beth was a lot more sanguine than most Dulwich residents about the strange lack of a Waitrose in SE21. But when she actually had people coming round, she felt it every bit as acutely as Katie, and even Belinda. As per usual, she had not been organised enough to sort out an online delivery instead.

  With a sigh, she heaved herself out of the warm snugness of the bed, where Harry was taking up the lion’s share of the duvet but at least generating enough heat to compensate, and got herself down to the kitchen table to plan her campaign. As soon as she was settled with a piece of A4 and a hot cup of tea, her mobile shrilled. Bridge Over Troubled Water. That was all she needed. Once upon a time, she would have blithely ignored her mother’s call. Now, after that hospital bedside pledge, she was a reformed character – or trying to be.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ she said as brightly as possible.

  ‘Just making sure you’ve got everything sorted out for tomorrow,’ said Wendy cheerfully.

  ‘Of course,’ said Beth, crossing her fingers and trying not to look at the bare kitchen cupboards. ‘All under control.’

  ‘Well, that’s great, because I’ve got one or two little things you could do for me,’ Wendy said, a wheedling note entering her voice. ‘Just at the garden centre, you know…’

  Beth immediately thought of Mrs Hills and her, what was it, Korean tangleweed? ‘Yes, we’ve got to get on the case with clearing your garden before the Council gets notified…’

  ‘What? Oh yes, I’m getting Joshy to do all that. But if you could get some bits and bobs, make things look a bit prettier. Well, you’ll have the time as you’re sorted for tomorrow. And you’ve got the car, whereas I’m, well, I don’t like to complain, but I am still feeling a little weak…’

  Beth gritted her teeth, well and truly hoist by her own petard. Why had she tried to pretend she was ready for the lunch? Her mother surely knew her better than that. And now she was just plain taking advantage. But Beth couldn’t admit she’d lied. She was reduced to mouthing curses as her mother dictated a list of plants on the pristine sheet of paper that was supposed to feature tomorrow’s menu. Beth knew Wendy was only trying to make her garden look a little better to impress Josh and whatever girl he had in tow. But at least, she supposed, it would mean that this troublesome weed was going to get its comeuppance at last – and they’d avoid Mrs Hills’ wrath and a possible summons from Wyatt’s Estate and Southwark Council.

  ‘While we’re on the subject of Josh, I don’t suppose you know if his girlfriend has any dietary requirements or anything?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean, dear? Why would she be on a diet?’ asked Wendy, in Beth’s view wilfully misunderstanding her. ‘And in any case, if you’ve already shopped it’s a little late to ask now. Looking forward to seeing you in a short while,’ Wendy said, signing off abruptly.

  Deflated, Beth scribbled down a few things that she was pretty sure she should cook, looked at her watch, grabbed her bag and jacket, and made for the door. ‘Bye!’ she shouted up, to total silence from two sleepy males. She was pretty sure things shouldn’t be like this. Where were her helpers, when she needed them? But it was too late to waste time worrying about that now.

  Just as she was about to slam the door, the one male who was always willing to lend a paw padded up to her, all beseeching eyes. ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said, clipping on Colin’s lead.

  By going to the small Tesco on the Croxted Road, Beth managed to get everything on her food list, and although it wasn’t the corn-fed, lovingly coddled produce a Waitrose would have provided, it didn’t leave her bankrupt either. She stuffed the bags in the boot, got Colin out of the car, and then they nipped across the road, past one of her favourite bookshops, and dived behind the parade of shops to find one of the area’s hidden gems – a little garden centre, tucked away.

  This is definitely the place to do a little, ahem, digging, thought Beth, as she wandered past tables stocked with beautiful plants that she knew full well would last only moments if she ever got them home. She could only hope that, against all the evidence, Wendy was turning over a new leaf and would remember to water this stuff once it was in her back garden.

  She’d just about stopped Colin from cocking his leg against a very fine miniature tree in a pot, when an assistant bustled over, wearing a long green apron with the garden centre’s logo on the bib.

  ‘Can I help?’ he said politely. ‘And would your dog like some water?’ He diplomatically pointed over to a bowl in the far corner. As well as being a kind offer, Beth could see this would keep Colin nicely out of tinkling range. The garden centre had its own sprinkler system and didn’t seem to want any extra help. She led him over and looped his lead across a handy bit of fence.

  While she had the assistant’s attention, Beth asked lots of questions about what her mother would need to rid herself of the pes
t Mrs Hills had identified. She was soon armed with all sorts of information and techniques which, she was pretty sure, would mean that Wendy’s entire plot would be pristine inside a week, and the knotweed on its way to plant hell.

  They soon got onto the subject of gardening in general. Much of it – talk of azaleas and zinnias – was way above Beth’s head, though it reminded her of absent friends who’d loved gardening, and made her feel rather melancholy. She shook this off; it just wasn’t useful now. She mustn’t waste this opportunity to find out more about the Dulwich gardening scene.

  With some gentle steering, Beth managed to work things round to the allotments, the Open Garden scheme, and all things floral in the area. Luckily, the assistant was chatty and clearly a bit bored. Maybe this wasn’t his dream career, or maybe the hours dragged sometimes. He was soon filling Beth in on the arcane rivalries and delicate complications of ministering to highly competitive types armed with trugs and trowels.

  ‘Most of them are fine, yeah?’ he said with the teenage upward lilt which usually had Beth gritting her teeth. Now she couldn’t get enough of it. ‘But there’s one or two, yeah? They’re seriously out of their trees – trees, ahaha,’ he giggled.

  Beth managed a smile, hoping he wasn’t going to get off-track. ‘Anyone in particular you’d say was, erm, worse than the rest?’

  The boy fingered his non-existent beard and seemed to be thinking deeply. Beth prayed this wouldn’t take too long; she had an unroasted lunch festering in the car, and Wendy was no doubt tapping her foot, waiting for her plants.

  ‘Yeah, I’d say there was one lady, who was, you know, really into it? More so than others, maybe?’