Murder in the Garden

by Veronica Heley

  ‘Of course you can, mother.’ Diana unstrapped Frank from his pushchair and gave him a little shove towards Ellie. ‘You'd better keep him all night, because Derek wants us to go up West.’ ‘I've already told you I can't,’ said Ellie, as Frank made a beeline for her and clasped her around her legs.

  Dear Rose swooped on little Frank and gave him a smacking big kiss. ‘Oh, we don't really mind, do we, Frank? Come along and help Rose with the polishing. See, here's a beautiful yellow duster just for you.’

  Roy said, ‘I'll see if I can get the telly and video fixed up for him to look at.’

  Diana hated to thank Roy for anything, but she managed some sort of mumble which could be taken as ‘thanks' if you were charitably minded.

  Quite without foundation for her belief, Diana had expected to inherit Miss Quicke's millions till Roy came on the scene, and was unable to accept that it had been her own shady morality which had lost her her great-aunt's favour, and not the advent of a long-lost son.

  Wordlessly, Ellie waved Diana goodbye, even though Diana never looked back as she got into her car and drove away.

  Roy manoeuvred the two bay trees into position, one on either side of his new, or rather reclaimed, front door. ‘Workmen all over your house, Ellie? What for?’

  ‘I suppose she means policemen. You remember the digger turned up a skull in next door's garden yesterday. The police are all over next door still, and I told Armand he could work in my house today.’

  ‘Who was that?’ A sharp voice from a sharp old lady. Miss Quicke had arrived at the precise moment the living room was ready to receive a visitor.

  ‘Tea up!’ Rose sang out from the kitchen. Frank was busy tearing the plastic bubble-wrap off a picture. Roy pulled the rest off, and showed the little boy how to pop bubbles, which made them both laugh uncontrollably. Miss Quicke seated herself in the best chair, and motioned Ellie to a seat at her side.

  ‘I can see you've got a lot to do yet, but I won't have Rose worn out before this evening's party, so why don't we call it a day, and tackle the rest tomorrow?’

  Roy couldn't rest, but began pushing furniture about, an inch here and an inch there, followed around by little Frank, squeaking with pleasure, especially when Roy put the little boy into a chair and began shunting him around the room, pretending to be a train. Rose and Ellie, smiling a little wearily, obeyed Miss Quicke and found themselves comfortable chairs in which to relax.

  Seven

  Ellie had almost fallen asleep. Aunt Drusilla was right, as usual. They had worked hard that morning and could do with a little rest. Roy had taken little Frank out into the garden to give him a run around. Rose was gently whiffling, almost snoring.

  Someone pounded on the front door and all three of them started awake, looking around to see who'd made that noise. Roy came in from the garden carrying little Frank and got to the door first.

  It was DI Willis, looking thunderous. Plus sidekick, also in plain clothes, who was luckily not the ill-mannered sandy-haired one, but the one who'd sat in the hall when DI Willis had visited Ellie before.

  ‘Mrs Quicke. I've been chasing you all over the place. Why didn't you leave a message saying where you'd be today?’

  ‘I did,’ said Ellie, struggling to her feet. ‘I think you know Miss Quicke and Roy Bartrick, her son, and dear Rose.’

  DI Willis scowled. Roy grimaced and Miss Quicke lifted her chin so that she could look at the policewoman down her nose. Little Frank ignored her.

  ‘Tea, dear?’ said Rose, never one to hold a grudge. ‘Hardly any milk, no sugar and strong, isn't it? And what for you, young man?’

  The ‘young man' smiled and said politely that he didn't want anything, thank you. He gave his name, which sounded like ‘Honeywell' but surely couldn't be that.

  Miss Quicke was not amused at this intrusion. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

  DI Willis persevered. ‘I need to speak to your niece, urgently.’

  ‘Can't it wait?’ said Ellie, worrying about all the unpacking that still needed to be done.

  ‘No, it can't. This is a murder investigation, you know.’

  Roy said, ‘Never a dull moment around you, Ellie. Why don't you use my office at the back? There's a couple of chairs and a desk in there already, and it's quiet.’

  His office had once been a large outhouse. It was quiet, peaceful and full of light, as Roy had replaced most of the roof with glass panes. It was also dusty, uncarpeted, and still contained unpacked cardboard boxes. But it did contain a couple of chairs and a desk. Ellie made herself comfortable in one chair while DI Willis sat in the other chair behind the desk.

  The young policeman looked around for a third chair, but there wasn't one, so he sat on the floor and got his notebook out. Ms Willis looked around her, and addressed the other policeman. ‘I need to take another pill. Can you get me a glass of water?’

  He nodded, and left.

  Ellie was impatient. ‘So, what was so important it couldn't wait till tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow's Sunday. You'll be off somewhere, at church or looking after your family.’

  Ellie nodded. So she would.

  DI Willis said, ‘There are still more tests to be done, but we've established that the body must have been in the ground at least fifteen years. Possibly more.’

  Ellie blinked. So, it couldn't have been one of the Bosnians. ‘So that rules out the woman who shrieked at everyone, the Bosnian family and the two who went off to Spain. Is that right?’

  The young policeman came back with a glass of water and handed it to his boss, who took a couple of painkillers and downed half the water.

  DI Willis saw Ellie watching her, and said, ‘Toothache. Now. We need to go back much further. The Chaters - that's the people who went to Spain - arrived in 1994 …?’

  ‘They rooted out that beautiful camellia in the front garden. It had been planted many years before and was quite a sight in the spring. Ah well.’

  ‘So tell me about the people before the Chaters. According to you, there was a man and his wife lived there before, but the man died of cancer.’

  Ellie could feel reluctance building up inside her. She did not want to think about those days. Diana had been a stroppy teenager, throwing tantrums the moment she was thwarted. If she'd stayed in the state system, perhaps she wouldn't have been so demanding, but Frank had put her in a fee-paying high school which, together with Aunt Drusilla's demands, had kept them in penury for years.

  DI Willis intoned, ‘Come on, Ellie. You can do it. What do you remember about them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ellie, feeling cross. ‘They lived there. The man died. She got engaged to another man. She left. End of story.’

  Ms Willis was tapping on the desk, impatient. ‘You can do better than that.’

  Ellie rubbed her forehead. ‘It's so long ago. How long ago did you say the woman was killed?’

  ‘Fifteen to twenty years.’ Impatiently. ‘Come on, you can do it.’

  Ellie had never been that good at mental arithmetic. If she had the figures written down in front of her, she could do it much more easily. She made a mental picture in her mind of the figures ‘2004' Then took away fifteen. Which made it 1989. What had happened in 1989? She couldn't remember.

  Furthermore, Ellie did not like being called by her Christian name by this woman. She did not want to look back into the past. She definitely did not want to think about what Diana had been like in those days. Wild, that's what. A constant anxiety. And foul-mouthed, though luckily she'd grown out of that eventually.

  Relax. The DI didn't want to know about that bad time which Ellie had been having. Or her family.

  ‘Concentrate, Ellie. Fifteen years ago. 1989. You would have been - how old? Thirty-five?’

  ‘Ish,’ said Ellie, who'd been a little older than that, though not much. ‘I was still working then.’

  DI Willis was subduing impatience. It didn't suit her. The tide of red in her face clashed with the badly dyed ma
hogany hair. Ellie wondered vaguely what the woman's natural hair colour was.

  Diana had been caught shoplifting and her excuse had been that, as Frank hadn't given her enough money to buy the outfit she'd set her heart on, he'd forced her to do it. It had taken some fast talking to stop that going to the courts. Luckily Diana had been in awe of her headmistress, and a threat to inform her of what Diana had done had helped keep the girl in check for a while.

  ‘Come on, Ellie! We haven't got all day.’

  Ellie stood up, and pushed her chair away from her. ‘I've told you all I know. I've not given you permission to call me by my Christian name, and I am rather busy today, so …’

  The door crashed open and in rushed little Frank, sobbing. Ellie scooped him up and cradled him. ‘There, there! What's wrong with my little Frank, then?’

  He was clutching an ivory statuette which looked valuable. Rose panted in after him. ‘Sorry, but … Frank dear! I told you that's not a dolly, and it's not for you to play with. So sorry, Ellie, but he climbed on to the back of a chair and knocked it off the bookcase and Roy's going spare …!’

  The little boy buried his head into the angle of Ellie's neck and clung to her.

  ‘Let me have that, dear,’ said Ellie. She tried to prise Frank's fingers from the statuette, and failed.

  The young policeman got up off the floor, and somehow or other managed to lift Frank off Ellie and into his own capable arms. ‘Got two of my own, like.’

  For a count of three, everyone thought the situation was under control. Then Frank realized he was in the arms of a complete stranger, and threw himself backwards, yelling, his face bright red.

  Rose managed to catch the statuette as Frank threw it from him, and Ellie caught Frank as the policeman struggled in vain to hold the little boy.

  ‘Ganny!’ cried Frank, burrowing once more into Ellie's arms.

  ‘There, there!’ said Ellie, patting him, stroking him. She hooked the chair towards her and sat, rocking Frank backwards and forwards. ‘There, there! All gone. Safe and sound.’

  The young policeman looked amused. ‘I'd forgotten they throw themselves backwards like that. Mine are past that stage.’

  Ellie smiled at him. ‘Yes, they do grow up fast, don't they?’ She banished the thought of Diana's sulky face from her mind. Diana hadn't really intended to steal. Not really. She'd succumbed to a bad impulse, probably egged on by another girl, the one who'd been removed from the school a couple of weeks later. It had just been a bit of fun that had gone wrong. She'd never done it again.

  ‘Well, now,’ said DI Willis. ‘Perhaps we can get back to …’

  Rose said, ‘Shall I take him, Ellie?’

  ‘No!’ yelled Frank and tried to get his head under Ellie's arm. ‘It's all right,’ Ellie said. ‘I'll keep him till he calms down. He probably hasn't had a nap today. He doesn't always need one, but what with all this excitement …’

  The cheerful policeman nodded. ‘Takes some of them like that, doesn't it? Shall I get you a more comfortable chair, Mrs Quicke?’

  Ellie shook her head, thinking that this young man was likely to go far. Perhaps even farther than his boss, who had integrity and perseverance but very little in the way of personal skills. ‘Thank you, but no. I'll just sit here a while and keep quiet.’

  DI Willis cleared her throat. ‘Unfortunately, we can't just sit around in a murder enquiry, waiting for a child to drop off to sleep.’

  Ellie considered Ms Willis. Had the woman never felt any tenderness towards anyone? Not even towards a child? She wasn't married, of course. She wore no rings on her fingers and her manner was always abrasive. Ellie held back a sigh, fearing to disturb little Frank, who was drowsing in her arms.

  ‘Very well. I'll tell you what I remember.’ She kept her voice soft, to avoid disturbing Frank. ‘The people before the Chaters were called something very ordinary, like Brown. No, Browning. He was …’ She concentrated. ‘I think he was called Greg. She was Lilian. Yes, that's right. Greg and Lilian. And his friend, the one she married later, he was Ted. I really don't like to think about them.’

  Or to think about the way Diana had sworn at the store detective when caught. Diana had said afterwards that it hadn't been the first time she'd pinched stuff from the shops, but really Ellie hadn't been able to believe that. Not Diana!

  Ms Willis attempted a smile. ‘You do seem to have had some antisocial neighbours. What was the matter with these people, the Brownings?’

  ‘Oh, they were quiet enough. Nice people, we thought. Kept themselves to themselves. They had the house painted up - some very old people had lived there before and had let the place go, you see. He - Greg - he said he fancied a bit of gardening now he was retired.

  ‘They'd come from North London. Possibly Paddington? Not sure. Anyway, it was very built-up where they'd been before, but they'd come into a bit of money - from her father, I think - and wanted to buy somewhere in a nice neighbourhood. Greg fancied seeing a bit of sky, breathing some fresh air, taking on an allotment.

  ‘That was his dream, to have an allotment and grow his own vegetables. He tried to hack down some of the brambles at the back, thought he could grow quite a lot of stuff there. Even started with some Gro-bags on the patio. They were only there … what … four years? Five?’

  ‘Very quiet, you say. Did they have many visitors?’

  ‘No, not many. He said to me once that his wife had wanted to make a complete break from the past. I got the impression they'd been mixing with rather a rough lot before, and believed they were moving upmarket when they came here. Perhaps they were right.’

  She must remember that one mistake didn't mark you for life. Diana had kept her place in the High School and had never stolen from the shops again. It had been just attention-seeking. That's what it had been. She'd learned her lesson. Ellie had never forgotten it, though. Where had she gone wrong, that her only child could have done such a terrible thing? Surely, it must be her fault.

  Not Frank's, of course. He'd been livid with Diana. Ellie had even feared that he'd cut off her allowance. Diana had thought so, too. Her face …!

  ‘What happened to them?’ said Ms Willis.

  ‘Hm? Oh, it was tragic. He'd been a jobbing builder, you know. He was a big, hearty-looking fellow. He used to talk to me when he was clearing stuff from the front garden, asking me what plants he should put in, and that. She didn't have anything to do with the garden. She was a pale, wispy sort of creature. Blonde. A true blonde, almost ash blonde. Nice enough in her way.

  ‘You could hear him coughing through the wall. He smoked, you see. Wouldn't give it up, no matter what the doctor said. She didn't smoke. She worried about him all the time. She couldn't get him to stop. It was cancer, of course. Such a big, stronglooking man, he was. And nice, too. He lost his hair with the chemotherapy and had to wear a wig, which he hated. She didn't like him going out without his wig, but he said he'd rather wear a cap, and he did, mostly.

  ‘It took him a long time to die. Every time I saw her, she seemed to be weeping. She lost weight. I took her to the doctor's myself once, because she fainted in the Avenue when she was out shopping. It was lucky I saw her. She'd got a raging infection, and it took ages to clear up. Throat, you know. Really, she ought to have been hospitalized but he was still at home then, fighting it, clinging on to life. Shortly after, they took him off to hospital. I offered to go with her to see him, but she said no, she knew Frank liked me to be at home when he got back in from work, and Diana …’

  Diana had said something awful about the old man taking his time to die, and really Greg hadn't been that old. Diana had been, what - fifteen - when Greg died?

  DI Willis said, ‘So, this Greg died in hospital. Which hospital? What month?’

  Ellie tried to think. ‘Ealing Hospital. The month? I seem to remember it was autumn, but I can't get any closer than that.’

  ‘What happened to the widow?’

  ‘I went to the funeral with her because she said
she hadn't been inside a church for ages, but he'd wanted a church funeral, so that's what they were going to have. A few of their old friends came to the church, and a few of our neighbours, not that they knew her all that well, but because they'd all seen her around and we were sorry for her. Afterwards, she had a few people round for a cuppa and a sandwich.

  ‘I managed to get Frank to stay with Diana for an hour - she was revising for some exam or other and never liked to be left alone in the house - and I went in to see what I could do to help. I was worried about the poor woman, knowing she was still on antibiotics and had taken Greg's death hard. But she said she was all right, that some old friends were looking after her.

  ‘We thought she might go back North London way, but she didn't. She crept about for a while like a little white mouse. Then one day I heard Frank shouting outside. Someone had parked in front of our house in what Frank considered to be “his” slot. Of course, he had no special right to that piece of road, but … anyway, he was shouting at someone who'd parked an old rattletrap of a car there. A big man came out of next door and shouted back at Frank. He wouldn't move. Frank got really angry. Well, you know what men can be like over parking slots.’

  ‘Women, too,’ said DI Willis. ‘You've no idea.’

  ‘No, I haven't,’ said Ellie. ‘I don't drive. Anyway, that was the first time we saw the man. Ted, his name was. He was in the building trade, too. He said he'd been a very good friend of Greg's, and I suppose he might have been, but he wasn't at the funeral and he hadn't visited them before Greg died. At least, I hadn't seen him. Certainly that car of his wasn't around before. But he comforted Lilian and I was glad about that. At first we were all pleased that she had someone to look after her. And then we-’

  ‘Who's “we”?’