Murder in the Garden

by Veronica Heley

  Veronica Heley is married to a retired probation officer and they have one musician daughter. She is actively involved in her church in Ealing, West London - the London suburb in which the Ellie Quicke mysteries are set. She has had over 60 books published.

  The Ellie Quicke Mysteries

  MURDER BY SUICIDE

  MURDER OF INNOCENCE

  MURDER BY ACCIDENT

  MURDER IN THE GARDEN

  MURDER BY COMMITTEE

  MURDER BY BICYCLE

  MURDER OF IDENTITY

  MURDER IN THE PARK

  MURDER IN HOUSE

  MURDER BY MISTAKE

  MURDER MY NEIGHBOUR

  MURDER IN MIND

  MURDER IN

  THE GARDEN

  Veronica Heley

  Ostara Publishing

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  First Published 2004

  Copyright © 2004 Veronica Heley

  Veronica Heley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A CIP reference is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781906288 679

  Ostara Publishing

  13 King Coel Road

  Lexden

  Colchester CO3 9AG

  www.ostarapublishing.co.uk

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  One

  She couldn't understand what was the matter. Her legs refused to hold her up. She clung to the door frame.

  Her tongue was being lazy, too. ‘What did you put in my drink?’

  ‘A mild sedative to help you relax. I have brought your suicide note with me. Where is it? Didn't I put it in my wallet? See how you have upset me. I am shaking with nerves. I have never killed anyone before, you see.’

  He unfolded a piece of paper, and held it up for her to see. She read the words aloud.

  ‘I can't bear the shame any longer. My husband did kill the girl.’

  She knew it wasn't really funny, but for some reason she wanted to laugh. How absurd! No one would believe it for a minute! It had been stupid to laugh, because it made him angry.

  His face darkened. He caught hold of her arm and swung her back into her chair. The sticky liquid from the overturned bottles swelled into pools and began to move slowly to the edge of the table. One drop fell on her skirt. Another on to her leg.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said, producing a sharp knife. He lifted up her right hand. She tried to pull away. He was much stronger than her.

  He closed her fingers around the knife.

  He laid her left hand palm upwards on the table. He forced her right hand - still holding the knife - to hover over her left wrist.

  ‘No!’ She tried to scream. No sound came out.

  ‘And now, dear lady, let me help you slash your wrists …’

  * * *

  Ellie Quicke couldn't concentrate. The noise of the mechanical digger was driving her insane. She covered her ears, pushing her fingers through her short, prematurely silvered hair. She couldn't even complain to her neighbours about it, because she was responsible for the digger being there in the first place.

  Kate and Armand were a lovely couple but they couldn't tell a gladiolus from a nettle. They'd copied Ellie's new conservatory at the back of her house, intending theirs to be a dining and living room.

  The view from the back of these semi-detached houses was spectacular, as the gardens sloped down to an alley and then up to a pretty Victorian Gothic church surrounded by mature trees. That view - added to the nearness of a decent row of shops, a primary school and a library - kept up the price of these undistinguished but well-built three-bedroomed houses. It was a most desirable neighbourhood, usually.

  But not today.

  The noise was an assault on the ear. Midge - Ellie's marauding tomcat - didn't like it, either, but plopped out of the cat flap and disappeared over the garden fence.

  Kate and Armand had asked Ellie to mastermind a makeover for their neglected garden, and she'd been delighted to do so. They were happily out at work when the machinery started up, but Ellie wasn't.

  For the third time she tried to add up the monthly accounts and for the third time failed to agree a total. If only her dear husband Frank had allowed a calculator in the house, she could have resorted to one. A memory came up and hit her; Frank was standing beside her saying, ‘Only the mentally deficient need calculators.’

  She winced.

  So there wasn't one in his desk. She still thought of it as ‘his' desk, in the same way as she still thought of the computer as his, even though he'd died some time ago.

  She eyed the PC with misgivings. She'd been told that she only used a tiny fraction of what the machine was capable of doing. She was pretty sure there'd be a facility for adding a column of figures on it. But where? And how? She could run off the occasional letter on it. Yes, it allowed her to do that when it was in a good mood. But add figures? No.

  The noise was appalling, even though she was in the study at the front of the house. There was a hatch from the study into the kitchen, so she shut that. The noise abated from a hungry howl to a moan. Better.

  She squared her elbows. She would not be beaten by a column of figures. If necessary, she'd ask Kate next door to check them when she returned from her highly paid job in the City. She wouldn't ask Armand, who was a teacher but had a short fuse.

  She tried again, and reached a fourth figure which didn't match any of her preceding attempts.

  She threw up her hands and set the ledger on one side. There was a great muddle of papers on the desk, not to mention an ancient cigar box containing some pieces of undistinguished family jewellery which her aged Aunt Drusilla had insisted on giving her. Ellie hadn't worn any of it yet, or even had it insured. She pushed the box to the back of the desk and drew some bills towards her. At least she could pay those. At the back of her mind she could hear Frank snorting, ‘How can you work in such a mess?’

  She shook his voice away.

  He was right, of course. The muddle of paperwork was a sign that she was not coping. Frank had left her very comfortably off but she didn't want everyone to know it, so she'd set up a trust fund to give money away to deserving causes. To her dismay, that also took a lot of time to administer.

  Then there was her difficult daughter Diana, whom Ellie did not class as a deserving cause. Diana was expecting Ellie to back her latest money-making project, which Ellie was declining to do. Then much of her time at weekends was taken up with the care of her grandson, little Frank, who was much loved but a little too active to be an easy charge for someone in her fifties. There was also her aged aunt Drusilla, and her cousin … and friends … all demanding time and attention.

  She raised her head from her paperwork. Something was wrong.

  Ah, she had it. The noise had stopped.

  Had they finished already? They'd had their elevenses some time ago. True, they had to dig out two fairly large holes in the ground to accommodate the water feature which Kate and Armand had specified, but …

  It was rather like the silence you get after a child has fallen and hur
t itself. If machinery stopped and men then shouted at one another, that was all right. If it stopped and there was a horrible hush, then it wasn't.

  She went through the kitchen into her new conservatory to have a look, but couldn't see properly into next door's garden for the shrubs between. She opened the back door, telling herself she was being silly, but would just have a look to satisfy herself. Halfway down the path there was a natural break in the hedge, and she could see through.

  Billy the handyman was standing by the earth digger, looking down into the hole that had just been dug. His mate was sitting on the seat of the digger, also staring down.

  Ellie said, ‘Anything wrong?’

  Billy wiped his arm across his forehead. ‘'Fraid so. Don't you come no nearer, now. You don't want to see this.’

  There is nothing more irritating to a grown woman than to be told ‘you don't want to see this', so naturally Ellie hastened down her own pretty garden, into the alley, and up through the gate into Kate's. The untrimmed bushes, brambles and saplings which had covered the garden for the last umpteen number of years had been crudely scraped off and dumped in a skip. Halfway up the garden, a pit had been excavated to form the top pool of a new water feature, and the topsoil from that hole had been dumped in the skip on top of the vegetation.

  Kate and Armand had wanted a small upper pool, with a trickle of water from a large bamboo pipe feeding a larger lower pool, which would then be recycled back up the slope via a pump. There had evidently been no problem cutting out the upper pool, but the machine had just started on the lower one when … something white had appeared in the grab.

  Billy's mate got down from his seat. ‘I never dug up one of them afore.’

  ‘This'll cost us,’ said Billy. ‘Put us right behind.’

  Ellie thought that the skull looked exactly like the ones which they sometimes found in her favourite television programme on archaeological digs. It looked quite clean and not at all alarming.

  ‘Have you found a Saxon burial, then? Are there any gold rings in there?’

  ‘I can see the ribs,’ said Billy. ‘Don't think it's Saxon, though.’ He exchanged a man-to-man look with his mate. ‘Perhaps you'd best go back your side of the fence, Mrs Quicke. We'll have to report this. Don't suppose they'll let us get on with the job for a while.’

  ‘No, I don't suppose they will,’ said Ellie, her mind still running on archaeology. ‘Would you like a cuppa?’

  They both nodded. On her way back up to her own house, she heard Billy on his mobile asking for the police, to report finding a body.

  ‘What nonsense,’ thought Ellie, amused rather than perturbed. She began to speculate as to whether the present church had been built on the site of a much earlier one, and if so, whether there were more burials to be found in the locality. What happened to the grave goods that were sometimes found with such burials? She'd read of gold rings and daggers and, oh, all sorts of interesting things that usually ended up in museums. She wondered if Billy would be able to claim treasure trove if they found some gold coins or rings. She'd known Billy for years. She'd be pleased if he had found some.

  She took a tray of mugs and some biscuits back down the garden and up through the gate, just as the police arrived. Two men in uniform, neither of whom she knew. ‘Someone reported a suspicious death?’

  ‘A body,’ said Billy, taking a mug of tea from Ellie and adding sugar. ‘Excavating for a pond. Turned it up in the grab.’

  ‘It's exciting, isn't it?’ said Ellie. ‘Who would have thought it, a body in the garden. Would you gentlemen like some tea, too?’

  Again a man-to-man sign passed between Billy and his mate. Billy said, ‘Suppose you go back to your house, Mrs Quicke. Make yourself a cuppa in peace and quiet. No need for you to stick around, is there?’

  One of the policemen stared at Ellie. ‘You're that Mrs Quicke, are you? I've heard about you.’ He didn't seem to have liked what he'd heard.

  Ellie blushed, but tilted her chin at the policeman. She couldn't help it if the police had written her off as an interfering fool before, when crimes had been committed locally. She might not be a Great Brain, but she knew people and she'd proved the police wrong on a couple of occasions when they'd jumped to conclusions.

  Bill took the tray off Ellie, and shooed her to the alley. ‘Go on, now. The police will want to cordon the site off, I shouldn't wonder.’ ‘Ring it in,’ one policeman said to the other, and called in to the station. ‘Yes, they have found a body. A skull, anyhow. And some ribs, looks like …’

  Ellie did as she was told. She made herself a cuppa and sat down in her conservatory, from which she could catch glimpses of the activity next door through the hedge. She had a better view when she went upstairs to the back bedroom, because then she could see right over the hedge. More police arrived. A tent appeared to be erected in the garden, even though the weather was set fine and warm. It could be cool in September, but they'd had good weather that month so far.

  Tired of standing at the window and looking down on an allconcealing tent, Ellie returned downstairs. Standing in her living room, she could see down the garden and up to the church one way, and the other way she could look up through the bay windows of her living room to the road at the front of the house. She wondered how long it would take for people to gather in little groups … and yes, there was a group of neighbours across the road, all looking down at Kate and Armand's house.

  She was just debating whether or not to ring Kate at work to tell her the exciting news, when there was an uproar in the road outside. Ellie recognized that voice, so rushed through her hall and opened the front door.

  Yes, there was red-headed, foxy-faced Armand, just returned from a tiring day at school, and objecting like mad to being forbidden entry into his own house by one of the uniformed policemen. What fun! Ellie called to him to come over to her place, but the policeman wouldn't allow that, either.

  Armand's face was an unbecoming red by this time, prompting Ellie to wonder how often he had his blood pressure checked. ‘That's my house!’ he was yelling. ‘How dare you …!’

  The policeman said something Ellie couldn't hear.

  Armand looked shocked. ‘What? You mean … in our back garden? But … I don't understand.’

  A tall, well-built woman with badly dyed mahogany hair came out of the house, accompanied by a sandy-haired man who was also in plain clothes.

  Ellie drew in her breath. Detective Sergeant Willis was no friend of hers, but Ellie respected her brains, if not her dress sense. Ellie had no opinion at all of the sandy-haired policeman whose manners, she felt, left a great deal to be desired.

  It was at that moment Ellie began to wonder if she hadn't misinterpreted the situation. Perhaps it hadn't been a Saxon burial, after all. Perhaps the skull wasn't that old, though it had looked pretty clean to Ellie. Perhaps someone had been coming home from the pub, had fallen down in that deplorably neglected garden and died there. Then the brambles had grown over him or her. Oh dear. Poor man.

  Or perhaps not.

  Ellie let her tea grow cold while she thought about that. Armand had been neatly inserted into the back of a police car, still fuming. DS Willis had got into the car with him, but didn't drive away. Sandy Hair disappeared back into Kate's house, talking on his mobile. His mobile was usually attached to his ear. In Ellie's opinion, that mobile prevented him from having any meaningful communication with the rest of the human race.

  Ellie could imagine Armand's rage and bewilderment. Rage probably winning out over bewilderment.

  Suddenly he shot out of the police car and, pursued by DS Willis, thundered down the front drive to Ellie's house. Forgetting that there was a bell, he hammered on the door.

  Ellie opened it and registered the annoyance on DS Willis's face as she in turn recognized Ellie. It was clear the policewoman welcomed the encounter as little as Ellie did.

  Armand demanded, ‘Tell this woman how long we've been living here, Ellie.’

&nbs
p; ‘You moved in last August sometime. A couple of months before my husband died.’

  ‘You see!’ said Armand, whirling his arms around. ‘We haven't been here long enough to have been responsible for that skull or whatever it is! And why would we bring in a digger to excavate for a pond, if we'd buried someone there earlier?’

  ‘So you say,’ said DS Willis in a flat voice which meant she'd really hoped she could have cleared up the case by arresting Armand for murder. ‘So who did you buy the house from, may I ask?’

  ‘I don't know, do I! Someone who lived abroad. They'd let it out to some woman with three kids. Her husband left her, she moved into council accommodation, the house came on to the market and we bought it.’

  ‘Ah-ha,’ said DS Willis. ‘Disappeared, has he?’ Meaning she thought the man who'd disappeared might be the body in the garden.

  Ellie was doubtful. ‘I don't think a body could become a skeleton quite so quickly, could it? I suppose it depends on the soil …’

  ‘Acid soil, you want for that,’ said Armand, the schoolmaster.

  ‘Is clay acid?’

  DS Willis raised her voice. ‘So what was this woman's name?’

  Armand shrugged. ‘Moved out before we ever saw the house. Try the estate agents. Jolley's, in the Avenue.’

  Ellie raised her eyebrows, but of course it would be Jolley's, who had almost a monopoly of house sales in the district.

  ‘Yes?’ said DS Willis, noticing Ellie's reaction and swinging round on her.

  ‘It's only that my daughter Diana has moved in with Derek Jolley, the estate agent. She's turning a big house into flats which he's going to let.’ And taking advantage of her in other ways too, thought Ellie, with some distaste. It occurred to her that Diana hadn't been pursuing her for money lately. Could it be that her daughter was avoiding her?

  DS Willis looked grim. ‘Oh, I remember her. Do I remember her!’

  Most people remembered Diana, who was tall, dark and handsome, with the disposition of a bully. Armand's flashes of temper were as nothing to Diana's prolonged bouts of ill humour.