Murder in the Garden

by Veronica Heley

  What Ellie had thought was that Diana always put Diana first. ‘… but I love my son. You won't understand, but the bond between mother and son is so strong …’

  Stronger than that between mother and daughter? Ellie raised her eyebrows but didn't interrupt.

  ‘… that I'd have done anything to keep him. I thought you and Great-Aunt would back me up and that Derek would come round eventually. Then I found out I was pregnant. I didn't mean to get pregnant so soon. It was a mistake. I thought perhaps I'd just missed a period because of all the stress in my life, getting this place ready, keeping Frank away from Derek. Luckily I had this flat fixed up as an office, and could bring Frank here to play. He loves this garden.’

  Ellie looked around but couldn't see any evidence of a child playing in this flat.

  Diana gestured towards a cupboard. ‘I keep his things in there, and there's a shed outside for his toys on wheels. Things were coming to a climax. These flats were ready to go on sale and I asked Derek if he'd sell them at a reduced commission, but he said he couldn't do that. So, I told him I'd sell them on the Internet rather than through him, to save money. He didn't like that. But I needed the money and he hadn't helped me out here at all, so it was only fair.

  ‘Yesterday was agony. Knowing I was over three months pregnant with Derek's child and that Stewart and Maria wanted Frank so badly, I convinced myself that I must make the final sacrifice. I must give little Frank up, though it almost tore me in two even to think about it. I told myself that if I did that, everyone would be happy. Frank would miss me for a while and I knew I'd miss him, but he'd be safe with Stewart and Maria. And then everything would be all right with Derek. You were already looking after him yesterday, and I wanted to tell you what was going to happen so I drove over to Great-Aunt's - and walked into the dinner party from hell.’

  Ellie nodded. Now she knew why Diana had put up with all that rudeness.

  ‘I sat there watching that cow Maria cuddling my son and I told myself that this was what I wanted, that Derek would be pleased that I'd given Frank up, and thrilled when I told him about our own baby. I don't know how I sat through dinner, with everyone shutting me out …’

  ‘You weren't invited. It was a difficult situation.’

  ‘So what? They could have tried to see it from my point of view. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, to leave Frank there …’

  Ellie reflected that Diana had left her son with other people before, whenever it had suited her, though not of course, for good.

  ‘… and I didn't think anything of it when I tripped and fell over, but I did have one awful pain in my guts on the way home. Derek was there, and he said how pleased he was that I'd got rid of Frank, so I told him about our baby …’ Diana drew in her breath. Ellie felt sorry for her, almost. ‘He wasn't best pleased?’

  ‘He told me to get rid of it. That's when I saw him for the monster he was. I'd given my son away to please him and he'd obviously lied to me about us having a child of our own. So I began to pack. I was sure he'd stop me. But he didn't. He started drinking instead. So I got out of there with what I could put in the car and came here because I knew it would be quiet and I wouldn't have to answer any questions. I found I was bleeding and I began to get these pains. I thought if I lay down quietly it would stop. Then I thought why make it stop? If Derek wasn't bothered, why should I try to keep the child?

  ‘So, I started moving furniture around. I'd only rented enough furniture to dress two of the flats. I knew there were more people coming round today, so I had to move furniture from the groundfloor flat, which had been sold, to one of the upstairs ones. I couldn't move the heavier pieces, but I got the double bed up - it takes to pieces - and some of the chairs and the candles and flowers and cushions and stuff. I kept at it till … oh, about three o'clock this morning, I suppose. Then I lay down for a bit, but the pains didn't stop. I showed a couple of prospective buyers round at half past ten, but I'm not sure how I managed that. So I phoned you and then … well, I just sat on the loo and everything came away.’

  ‘Will you go back to Derek, now you've lost both your children?’

  ‘Don't say that! As if I were careless!’

  Ellie didn't know how else to put it. She realized Diana had used her - again. But looking back, how could Ellie have refused to help Diana out? She stood up. ‘Shall I help you make up the bed with fresh sheets?’

  ‘What, no more offers to take me back home? Which will be half mine when you die, anyway.’

  Ellie held on to her temper. ‘No, you've made your point.’

  ‘I've proved I was right about doing up a house with young professionals in mind, too. So, snubs to you and to Great-Aunt, who said I couldn't!’

  ‘Yes, you've proved you can do that. I only hope you're going to play fair with your buyers, Diana. Your reputation in the past has-’

  ‘This is real life, mother. Not a Disney film.’

  ‘If you've used me to cover up something crooked, then-’

  ‘I know better than that,’ said Diana, sullenly. ‘This venture has to be on the up and up. Your saintly reputation is safe.’

  ‘Thank you, dear.’ Ellie kissed the air near Diana's ear. ‘Now I'll be off home if you don't mind, but I suggest you get yourself checked out at the doctor's tomorrow.’

  Diana shrugged and let her mother out, not offering to drive her home even though it was now getting dark and Ellie's house was a good twenty-minute walk away. Ellie thought about walking down the Avenue past the burger bar where the men hung around after the pubs closed, and decided to phone for a minicab. Better be safe than sorry.

  Consternation. The businessman and the surgeon were furious! While they were out, that stupid woman had gossiped the local news to her father-in-law, and now he was in a bad way. Should they call the doctor? His breathing was laboured, despite the oxygen.

  They walked up and down the back garden, faces tight.

  ‘I thought you warned her not to …’

  ‘I did. But women are so stupid! She said it soothed him when she chattered away to him …’

  ‘But not about that!’

  ‘She had no idea. She still has no idea!’

  ‘That's no excuse.’ They halted, listening. One of the businessman's daughters, who was a trained nurse, was tending to her grandfather. It ought to have been her who'd been left behind to look after her grandfather, but she'd wanted to be included in the party, and the men had encouraged her to go, because there was a cousin of a suitable age going to be there. It wouldn't be a particularly good match for her, since the lad had nothing much in the way of education, but the boy's father would pay well for a bride with a British passport.

  The businessman's wife was locked in their bedroom, weeping.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked the businessman. ‘You're due back at work tomorrow, aren't you?’

  The surgeon looked at his watch. ‘I should be on the road now. I'll have to leave it to you to follow up with the police. If they know their business, we should hear news of an arrest any minute now.’

  ‘I'll check it out locally tomorrow.’

  ‘I'll ring you on your mobile at noon.’

  Monday morning. Ellie turned over in bed and thought about staying there. Why did life have to be so complicated?

  Yesterday …

  She didn't want to think about yesterday. Diana's miscarriage. Would Diana now fight to get little Frank back? It was good that she seemed to be making such a success of the house conversion, but her costs must have been horrendous.

  Next Ellie remembered the rumours about her husband chasing a young girl … and the police threatening to dig up her garden. She nearly screamed the word ‘Nonsense!’

  Dear Lord, it is not possible, no, it's not! I can't bear it. Any of it. She sat upright. Bill was taking her out for the day, so she could talk to him about it. He'd know what to do.

  Dear Bill hadn't had a proper holiday in ages, but he was taking a day off work so they coul
d go out into the country together to visit a nursery garden and look at plants. He wanted some for his garden and she needed to check the plants she'd ordered for the grounds of Roy's development at Endene Close. She must get dressed, have some breakfast and be ready for half past ten. Look at the time! She dislodged Midge from the bed and leaped out.

  Bill was on time, as always. Car gleaming, newly washed. Clothes casual but good. Shoes shining. Glasses glinting. Smiling in anticipation of his day off work in Ellie's company.

  Ellie had got up feeling disagreeable, but she made an effort to be pleasant. ‘Coffee before we start?’

  Bill had known her for years. ‘Now what are you up to, Ellie? I thought we'd stop for coffee in that old inn in Cookham.’

  ‘I need to ask your advice before we leave the house …’ She poured out some good coffee for him, and told him about the threat to her garden. As she did so, she realized she cared more about her garden being disturbed than about the rumour concerning her dead husband.

  This annoyed her. Surely she ought to care more about what people said about Frank than about a garden? Well … the garden was still with her, while Frank wasn't. This reasoning didn't satisfy her sense of what was appropriate either.

  She concluded, ‘… so is it safe for me to go out for the day, or will I find the garden all torn up when we get back? Can they do it without my permission?’

  Bill massaged his chin. They could, if they got a warrant. But they'd need good evidence to get a warrant, and from what you say there's nothing except an unsubstantiated rumour. Possibly a spiteful phone call from a neighbour?’

  Ellie thought of Mrs Coppola. Would she go to such lengths? She'd always been jealous of Ellie, resenting her son's affection for the older woman.

  Ellie threw up her hands. ‘I can't think straight on this one, Bill. What they've been saying about Frank, and having to look back on the past, has got me all mixed up.’

  ‘Brought it all back, has it?’ He didn't specify what ‘it' was. He didn't have to. He said, ‘I'll have a quick word with this Inspector Willis if you like, and then we'll be off out of it. Do you good to get out into the country for the day.’

  ‘You, too,’ said Ellie, dumped the coffee cups in the sink, made sure the shed at the bottom of the garden was locked up - it was - and that the top windows in the conservatory were open, because it looked like being another warm day. If Bill said he could fix it, then fix it he could. She could always rely on Bill.

  He wound up his conversation on the phone as she picked up her handbag and made sure her mobile phone was turned off. He said, ‘Inspector Willis is off today, but I spoke to some sergeant or other and he said their enquiries were continuing but that they wouldn't be digging up any more gardens today. I think it's safe for us to go out.’

  They took their time driving out of London on the A40 and then turned off through narrow lanes between hawthorn hedges, through tiny picture-book villages and common land with road signs saying Gypsy Lane … and then not giving any road signs at all.

  There were wild roses in the hedges, and some honeysuckle still. The sights rested Ellie's mind. Bill was a cautious driver, but a safe one.

  They didn't talk much. Arrived at the garden centre, he wandered off with his list to search for some special plant or other that he fancied, while she checked on the plants she'd ordered for the beds at Endene Close, and arranged for them not only to be delivered, but also planted up.

  ‘There's a special senior-citizen's lunch on today,’ said Bill, trundling along a trolley laden with various plants. ‘I've just qualified for it, but I'm afraid they won't give it to you.’ ‘Are you really sixty? You don't look it.’

  ‘And you still look as young as when I was first introduced to you, all those years ago. If only Frank hadn't got to you first!’

  This mild flirting amused her. ‘And you already happily married to your dear wife, whom I still miss so much.’

  ‘Ah, well. Life sometimes gives us second chances.’

  Ellie rather hoped he didn't mean that she was his second chance for marriage. She liked him enormously, but not that much. Come to think of it, she couldn't think of a man she'd want to marry right at this minute.

  They had a good, solid cooked lunch in the restaurant at the garden centre, and only then did Ellie tell him what had been happening with Diana. He heard her out, stirred sugar into his coffee and drank it before speaking.

  ‘Do you think she'll make it up with Jolley?’

  Ellie shrugged. ‘He's very sexy, apparently. She's been torn in two.’

  ‘Are you defending her after the way she's treated you?’

  Ellie didn't reply.

  Bill tapped his empty cup with a teaspoon, an irritating habit of his when thinking. ‘I can't act for her if there's a tug-of-love with Stewart over the boy. I'm already acting for him in the divorce case. Would she consider going back to Stewart?’

  Ellie shrugged. Shook her head. She didn't know, didn't think so.

  Bill laid the spoon down. ‘Well, we'll give it some time to settle down, shall we?’

  That was the worst of men. They always thought things would get better if you ‘gave it time'. In Ellie's experience, things usually went from bad to worse before they got better. But who was she to talk?

  Bill said, ‘How does all this leave you, Ellie?’

  ‘Confused. The police keep on at me to look back and remember how things were in the past.’ She tried to laugh. ‘We've had a fine lot of neighbours over the years, haven't we? I never got to know any of them properly. I see now why Frank always told me not to get involved with them. That really would have been the most sensible thing for me to do. But I did feel so sorry for them, some of them. Poor things, they never had a chance, probably born into the hands of social services and never out of it … or sad immigrants … or just …’ She shrugged again.

  She moved her chair to face him more directly. ‘What did you think of Frank? You knew him longer than I did.’

  ‘Why, yes. We met at the tennis club - which was where you met Frank, wasn't it, all those years ago? You had a wicked forehand, I seem to remember.’

  ‘I asked about Frank.’

  He lifted the spoon and tapped his coffee cup again. He smiled. ‘What I remember was how pretty you were. “My pocket Venus”, Frank said, when he brought you over to meet us. And you looked up at him as if he'd just stepped out of a story book.’

  ‘I was very young. My mother had just died and I hadn't had much of a social life before that, because she'd been so poorly for so long. I was working at an accountant's in the Avenue. Someone there said I should try to get out more and suggested I joined the tennis club. I was very shy that first day, but Frank rescued me and was so kind.’

  ‘He knew when he was on to a good thing.’

  Yes, thought Ellie. Perhaps he did. Perhaps it wasn't all onesided, as I've always thought. I was so grateful to him for loving me and making me his wife, even giving me a brand-new family to look after - though Aunt Drusilla was not exactly the most loving aunt you could have, and Diana never did respond to the love I gave her.

  Bill was looking at her with … compassion?

  She said, ‘What I need to know is, did Frank ever chase after other women? I mean, wives are often the last to know. I really do need the truth, Bill. Don't try to fob me off with lies.’

  ‘No, I wouldn't do that, Ellie. Frank never chased after any other woman but you, all the time I knew him. Yes, he looked at one or two other women over the years, in the way one does. All small and fragile, all blondes. Your type.’

  She laughed. ‘I've put on too much weight to be considered fragile nowadays. And my hair turned silver when I was only forty.’

  ‘You still look good to me.’

  ‘We're talking about Frank.’

  ‘He looked. No more. A good pair of legs, a pretty bust. All men look. I never heard of Frank doing any more than look, and I would have heard, Ellie, if he had. Believe me.’
>
  She let out a long sigh. ‘Thank you, Bill. I needed to hear that. I began to worry that I'd got him wrong, all these years. He could be sharp, I know that. And sometimes he wasn't as sympathetic to other people's troubles as he might have been, especially when I was ill.’

  ‘All those miscarriages you had. Five, was it?’

  ‘They took it out of me rather. I don't blame him for getting impatient once or twice, I was such a weepy little creature, dragging myself around … oh, I don't want to think about those days. Thank you, Bill. I feel so much better. Now, will you show me what plants you're buying for yourself?’

  He wanted to buy a young monkey-puzzle tree. How could he! Ellie had always considered monkey-puzzle trees the most useless trees in creation, and Bill wanted to buy one? He'd also hovered over a mahonia, which did at least produce flowers, but whose leaves had the cutting edge of a sharp kitchen knife. She'd found one in her garden when they moved in and given herself a nasty gash on it. Somehow the fact that he liked those plants lowered him in her estimation.

  On the drive back, she worked it out that if she'd loved Bill, she'd have felt indulgent towards his choice of plants. It was comforting in a way to realize that she didn't love him that much. She really did not want to be as dependent upon a man again as she had been with Frank.

  Eleven

  Ellie asked Bill to drop her off at the church and thanked him for taking her out. He was anxious to get back home to put his new plants in, so didn't make a fuss. They'd go out for a meal later that week, he said.

  The Endene Close development was coming along. Roy was there, checking that the plasterers had finished, and chivvying the kitchen fitments into place. He was talking on his mobile, jotting down notes on a clipboard. Busy, busy. He waved at Ellie but went on talking on the phone, so she stood back to imagine how the planting would look when completed in a few days' time, and then went on her way to Aunt Drusilla's.

  Rose was out shopping but Aunt Drusilla was very much in evidence, sitting in the best chair in Roy's new living room and scolding a television man for not having arrived when he'd said he would.