‘We do,’ I agreed foolishly. We were sitting in the study at Moorworthy House, facing each other across the polished surface of a wide mahogany desk. It was dark outside, and the room was lit by lamps, heavy brocade curtains pulled across the windows, the only sound the measured ticking of a clock. In the next room, the inspector’s sidekick, Det. Constable DeVille, was talking to Sophie.
‘So, Juno, tell me in your own words what happened. Begin with how you know the deceased.’
I explained that Gavin rented space in Old Nick’s, that we’d all come to the fete, how keen Gavin had seemed to come with us, and how he’d bought the sword and then disappeared.
‘I thought he’d gone to put the thing away in the car.’
‘And you say he bought this weapon here, at the fete?’ The inspector raised a sandy eyebrow. ‘Who from?’
‘His name is Eddie Bartholomew. I’ve never met him before. He’s a friend of Uncle … of Mr Sandy Westershall.’
The inspector was scribbling down names. ‘Do you know if Mr Bartholomew is still here?’
‘Everyone had gone except for Tom and Vicky … Mr and Mrs Smithson. They stayed to try and help us find Gavin. They’re not still waiting, are they?’
‘We’ve taken brief statements and let them go home. Someone will be interviewing them more fully tomorrow.’ The inspector smiled. ‘Juno, tell me a bit more about Gavin. Have you any idea how he … how this terrible thing happened?’
‘In the shop he was quiet, reading most of the time. He was really into all this fantasy stuff … superheroes and … I don’t want to make him sound stupid,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Actually, he was very intelligent, but … impressionable − immature, I suppose. I can imagine him running about in the woods, brandishing that dreadful weapon, stabbing himself.’ I found I was fiddling with the lid of a silver inkwell and stopped. ‘Sorry, but he was accident-prone.’
‘That’s all right.’ The inspector smiled. ‘I wanted your honest assessment. So, as far as you’re aware, he didn’t quarrel with anyone during the day?’
‘Well, as I say, I didn’t really see much—’ I stopped and stared. ‘You don’t think someone else stabbed him?’
The inspector spread his hands in an almost defensive gesture. ‘I would be very surprised if this turns out to be anything other than a bizarre and horrible accident,’ he responded gently, ‘but I have to keep an open mind. At this stage I can’t rule out foul play.’
I suddenly felt sick. I must have looked a bit green because the inspector paused to ask me if I was feeling all right. I assured him I was, and he carried on.
‘It’s a pity that so many people had already left the fete before this poor young man’s body was discovered. Mr Westershall will be supplying us with a list of stallholders, and we shall be speaking to them all. Other than that, all we can do is broadcast an appeal to anyone attending the fete to come forward. There were hundreds of people here today. Someone may remember Gavin, may remember seeing him go into the woods.’
I thought of him lying there alone, bleeding, frightened, unable to call for help. ‘Do you think if we’d found him earlier—’
The inspector was shaking his head. ‘We’ll have to wait for the pathologist’s report but I’m certain that death would have been instantaneous.’
Instantaneous? Did that mean that there wasn’t even a moment, however fleeting, that Gavin knew he was dying? Tears stung my eyes and I blinked them away. ‘His poor parents, they don’t know yet, do they? Who will tell them?’
‘Don’t worry about that, Juno,’ the inspector reassured me. ‘You can safely leave that to us.’ He stood up, clearly my signal to go. ‘And if you think of anything else—’
‘Actually, there is something − something that happened yesterday.’ I went on to tell him about Gavin being visited by the man who called himself Croaker, and what Gavin had said about him.
‘Croaker?’ he repeated, his sandy brows raised in surprise. ‘Creeping Ted Croaker?’
I wasn’t familiar with the sobriquet, but I described him as well as I could. The inspector was nodding. ‘You know him?’ I asked.
‘He’s a particularly unpleasant species of low life. Not violent, though. We put him away a couple of years ago for trying to sell Ecstasy tablets at the school gates.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Tell me, was Gavin on drugs?’
‘No!’ I was shocked at the idea. He often seemed like he was away with the fairies but that was a different matter. I’d certainly never seen him high on anything. As far as I knew he didn’t even drink.
‘Well, thank you. That’s useful information,’ he told me as he walked me to the door.
‘We shall talk to Mr Croaker.’
Jamie was pacing in the hallway outside and as I left the study he came towards me and enfolded me in a hug. ‘God, Juno, this is so bloody awful! You poor girl, it must have been a terrible shock finding him like that.’
‘Mr Westershall.’ The inspector’s voice called to him from the study door.
‘Yes, one moment, Inspector,’ he called back. ‘Juno, Sophie’s in the drawing room with Jess, waiting for you. Please go in, let Jess give you a drink.’
Sophie had obviously been sobbing; she was white as a wraith, her dark eyes huge in her little face. She clung to me and sobbed some more. I could have enjoyed a good sob myself, but somehow, like a big sister, I felt I had to keep it together. Jessica, wide-eyed and obviously horrified at the afternoon’s events, was doing a great job with the tea and sympathy. There was no sign of Emma.
‘Unless you’d like something stronger?’ she offered.
‘Better not, I’ve got to drive home.’
I accepted tea with gratitude but neither Sophie nor I wanted to linger. Moorworthy House had lost its curious charm. We drove in silence. For hours our attention had been focussed on police and ambulances and answering a thousand questions. Now the shock was sinking in we were too numb to speak.
‘It’s horrible,’ was all Sophie would say. ‘Poor Gavin.’
White Van juddered over a cattle grid as the woods on either side gave way to open moor. The night was black around us, tiny pinpricks of gold from some isolated dwellings the only lights that showed. Our headlights probed the road ahead, picked up the white backside of a ewe sitting on black tarmac. I slowed to a stop. She got slowly to her feet and ambled across in front of us to join a knot of others, scruffy pale shapes huddled in the shelter of granite boulders on the verge.
I kept thinking of Gavin’s face, of that moment when I’d turned him over. He’d looked so childlike, that oak leaf clinging to his pale cheek, his blue eyes staring at the sky. I’d never really noticed that his eyes were blue before.
‘Sophie,’ I began thoughtfully, as we turned onto the Ashburton road, ‘do you remember seeing Gavin without his glasses? Ever remember him not wearing them?’
She thought about it. ‘He was very short-sighted,’ she responded slowly. ‘He told me once that he’d tried contact lenses but didn’t like them. No, I’ve never seen him without his specs.’
‘No,’ I agreed, thinking about it some more, ‘neither have I.’
The last thing we wanted to do when we got back was to unload all our stuff. It was already late and we both longed to get home. But we didn’t want to leave our worldly goods in White Van overnight either, so I parked outside the shop. The first things that confronted us when we opened the van doors were Gavin’s rucksack and jacket and his boxes of stock. We placed all his things on his table. We didn’t know what else to do with them. As I put the jacket down, I felt the hard lump of Gavin’s phone in the pocket. ‘The police might want this,’ I said, drawing it out. ‘I’ll ring Inspector Ford in the morning and let him know I’ve got it.’
‘Sunday tomorrow,’ I yawned when we had unloaded everything. ‘I’ll come in and sort this stuff out.’
Sophie said she would come in too. ‘Will you ring Pat?’ she asked anxiously. ‘She doesn’t know what’s happened yet.’
>
‘Yes, but in the morning.’ I rubbed my hand over my face. I was so tired suddenly. ‘Why stop her getting a good night’s sleep?’
When I got home, the house was in darkness. Adam and Kate were already in bed. They opened Sunflowers for breakfast, and except in the winter months that meant on Sundays too. I tiptoed up the stairs and let myself into an empty flat, silent and dark. It must be good, at times like these, to belong to someone, to have someone to come home to.
I could see a red eye blinking in the darkness before I switched on the lamp in the living room. I pressed the button on the answering machine, but I already knew who the message would be from. Ricky and Morris were bursting to tell me about their day in the shop, curious to know how I’d got on at the fete and worried that it was so late and I hadn’t rung.
I knew I could ring them anytime, but they’d want to know every tiny detail of what had happened, and I wasn’t sure I could face a barrage of questions right now. Perhaps it was better not to have anyone to talk to, after all. It occurred to me that in South Korea, where my cousin Brian served as a diplomat, it would be breakfast time and he would certainly be up and about. But he had enough on his plate; I didn’t want him worrying about me.
I dropped down on the sofa and slumped there, too tired to get up and go to bed. I felt empty, as if someone had drained all the blood out of me. A soft chirruping noise and a thump from the bedroom told me that Bill had been on my bed and was obviously fed up of waiting for me to join him. His black shape slid sinuously around the open door and in one long leap he landed on my lap.
‘You’ll get me in trouble,’ I told him softly, ‘being up here all the time.’ He wasn’t my cat. He belonged to Adam and Kate but preferred to spend his time with me. Cats are like that, they choose their own people. He gazed at me from his one green eye and pushed his head against my hand, rubbing me with his cheek, marking me as his own. It seemed I belonged to someone after all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Feeling ragged after a rotten night’s sleep, I rang Inspector Ford and told him I had Gavin’s phone.
‘We’ve been looking for that.’ His voice betrayed the weariness of a man who’d been up all night too. ‘Gavin’s father seemed to think he should have had his mobile on him.’
‘It was in his jacket. Sorry. We’d packed up all his things before we knew what had happened to him. How are Gavin’s parents?’
The inspector sighed. ‘As you might expect. His father did the formal identification late last night.’
‘It must be dreadful for them.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed sadly. ‘I’ll send someone over for the phone.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course you can. I can’t promise I’ll be able to answer it.’
‘When I found him, Gavin wasn’t wearing his glasses. They must have come off when he fell. Have you found them?’
‘No. They can’t have fallen far. But looking for a pair of specs on a woodland floor is a bit like looking for—’
‘—a needle in a haystack.’
‘Precisely.’ He thanked me for calling him about Gavin’s phone and rang off.
Next, I phoned Pat, who listened to me in growing horror. She became very agitated, her voice turning to a low-pitched moan, convinced the whole thing was her fault because she hadn’t given Gavin the car keys so that he could put the sword away.
‘Please don’t think that,’ I begged her. ‘I don’t believe he had any intention of putting that sword in the car. He went off into the woods by himself so he could swagger about and pretend he was Robin Hood or someone.’ Pat didn’t sound convinced, but she calmed down. She’d brought her remaining stock home with her after the fete and planned to come into the shop to put it all back. I said I’d see her there.
I didn’t need to ring Ricky and Morris because no sooner had I put the phone down than it rang, and Ricky’s commanding voice was blasting down the line, demanding to know how the previous day had gone. I began to tell him, forced to stop so that he could put the phone on loudspeaker and Morris could hear it all. They listened pretty much as Pat had done but without the self-recrimination, constantly stopping me to ask questions, and declared their intention of coming down to the shop that morning to see me. I put the phone down. It seemed the whole world was coming to Old Nick’s that morning.
Pat got there before me. Her pale eyes were watery and her nose was red. She’s not the huggy-kissy sort, but she let me fold her in a big hug. She’s thin and strong, all bone and sinew, no softness in her body at all. I could feel her heart beating in her flat chest. ‘If only I’d …’ she began, voice trembling with emotion.
‘Stop it. It wasn’t your fault. Gavin should never have bought that sword. Bloody Barty,’ I went on in disgust, ‘should never have bloody sold it to him. Weapons like that shouldn’t be on sale, especially to impressionable young twerps like Gavin.’
Unconvinced, Pat blew her nose. ‘What are we going to do with all his stuff?’
‘Give it to his family I suppose, at some point.’ I patted her arm. ‘C’mon. Let’s get it stowed out of the way for the moment.’ We put the boxes and rucksack out of sight on the floor behind Gavin’s table. I placed his jacket over the back of his chair, which made it look as if he had just popped out for something and would be coming back.
We began to sort out our own stuff, working in subdued silence. It was difficult to think of anything to say. Trying to cheer each other up seemed wrong when Gavin was lying dead in a hospital mortuary. But in spite of myself, a laugh escaped me before I could stop it. I clapped a guilty hand over my mouth. ‘What’s she doing there?’
I couldn’t believe that I had been so wrapped in woe that I hadn’t noticed her, and hadn’t seen her the night before either, when Sophie and I dropped off our things. Mavis, the shop mannequin, had moved from my unit in the storeroom into the doorway at the back of the shop, half-blocking the corridor. In her arms she carried the sign that pointed the way to Antiques and Collectibles. The words Vintage Clothes had been added to the sign in felt pen. Mavis now wore a 1960s yellow mini-dress which zipped up the front, a long, straight black wig and a hippy hat. A macramé bag dangled from one shoulder and she sported huge pink sunglasses.
‘That looks good,’ Pat said, after we’d stared at Mavis for a moment.
‘Yes, it does,’ I agreed, wondering what else Ricky and Morris had been up to while we were away.
Sophie came in, pale and heavy-eyed and we exchanged hugs and sorrowful greetings. Her huge dark eyes shone with tears, but she smiled at the sight of Mavis. ‘Can you believe we didn’t notice her last night?’ I asked. ‘C’mon, let’s have a look,’ and we all trooped into the storeroom.
My unit had been transformed. A Spanish shawl, black, deeply fringed and dramatically embroidered with roses, had been pinned at an angle across one white wall, and as well as the hanging clothes rail, which was now stuffed with clothes, a hatstand and a folding wicker screen had made their appearance.
‘This is great!’ Sophie exclaimed. ‘People can try things on now.’ She grabbed a white, baker’s boy cap from the hatstand, jauntily placing it on her dark head, and admired her reflection in a full-length mirror that Ricky and Morris had brought in. On the folding screen hung a plastic mac in swirling, psychedelic colours, a pair of white knee-length boots placed neatly beneath it. A dressmaker’s dummy wore a feather boa and a starched net petticoat.
‘My mum used to have one of them,’ Pat cried, fingering its stiff frills. ‘I’ve got an old photo of her going out to a dance with a beehive hairdo and a big taffeta skirt.’
Sophie had grabbed the white boots and was sitting on a little chair, rolling up the legs of her jeans. I was still looking around me. My shaded lamps had been draped with gauzy scarves and a drop-leaf table pulled to the centre of the room and opened out. Several pairs of long kid gloves lay on its dark glossy surface, together with a top hat, a pair of opera glasses, and an open biscuit tin full
of buttons. A garden trug was filled with ribbons, braids and lengths of fringe, the sort that Morris used in making theatrical costumes, and a vase was stuffed with curling ostrich feathers.
‘What do you think?’ Ricky’s voice demanded suddenly from the doorway. He and Morris were standing there, laden with carrier bags.
‘It’s a bit over the top quite frankly,’ I told him.
‘The style is Early Tarts’ Boudoir.’ He dropped the bags and advanced on me, arms outstretched. ‘Are you all right, darlin’?’ He enveloped me in a cashmere hug and a miasma of menthol cigarettes, mints and citrus aftershave. ‘What a horrible, terrible thing to happen.’ He released me and descended on Sophie. Morris, I noticed, had laid a consoling hand on Pat’s arm and was whispering to her solicitously.
For a while the talk was all of Gavin and whether he could have stabbed himself accidentally. ‘If anyone could do it, he could,’ Ricky said frankly. ‘D’you remember, Maurice, when he was a kid, we had him in the pantomime?’
Morris nodded mournfully. Every few years, he and Ricky wrote and directed the Ashburton panto. ‘Dick Whittington, it was,’ he confirmed. ‘He was one of the rats. He went wrong in the middle of a dance routine and sent all the others tumbling over like dominoes.’
‘God, he was hopeless!’ Ricky shuddered. ‘Always two steps behind everyone else.’
‘Poor boy.’ Morris began blinking a lot and took off his round, gold spectacles, polishing them on his jersey.
Sophie threatened to start crying again so we changed the subject, forcing ourselves to behave as if everything was normal. Morris volunteered to go upstairs and make us all a cup of tea. He extracted a brick wrapped in foil from one of the carrier bags. ‘Banana bread,’ he explained, ‘just baked.’
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