Murder in the Garden

by Veronica Heley

  Ellie kissed Aunt Drusilla and obediently supplied her with a nice cup of tea, while wondering how soon Roy would find it irksome to live under his mother's eye.

  ‘You're hovering, dear,’ said Miss Quicke. ‘Sit down where I can see you and tell me what you've been up to. Rose tried to ring you this morning but got no reply. Little though she deserves it, I would like to be kept informed if my great-niece has been taken ill.’

  Aunt Drusilla ignored the television man, who was working frantically to adjust the set.

  Ellie decided to ignore him, too. ‘She had a miscarriage. Just over three months.’

  The television man hunched himself over, applying himself to his controls. Embarrassed.

  Miss Quicke frowned slightly. ‘Not Stewart's, I assume?’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘A lot's been happening. Do you want a report now?’

  She glanced meaningfully at the television man, whose ears had turned scarlet.

  ‘If you please,’ said Miss Quicke.

  Ellie reported. In detail. Miss Quicke listened. So did the television man.

  At the end, Miss Quicke enquired whether Diana would now get back with Derek. Ellie shrugged. She didn't know.

  ‘Or with Stewart?’

  ‘I doubt if he'd want to. And then, there's Maria.’

  ‘Hmm. I believe it would be better for the child to stay with his father.’

  The television man made an inarticulate sound, and gathered his tools together. Miss Quicke ignored him.

  Ellie said, ‘Suppose Maria's pregnant …?’

  The television man scrambled to his feet, presented Miss Quicke with a chit to sign, said everything was in order now and that it had been as good as a soap opera. And fled.

  Ellie waited on the older woman's reactions, but Miss Quicke was in no hurry to reveal her thoughts. Ellie washed up the cups they'd used and wiped off the dirty marks the television man had left on the wall and the control knobs.

  Miss Quicke asked, ‘What did you think of the way Diana's got the flats done up?’

  ‘Not my taste, but the young professionals seemed to like it. I don't think she'll have any difficulty selling them.’

  ‘So I was wrong about that.’

  ‘No,’ said Ellie. ‘You were right. You aren't in that market.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to be. I don't like missing out … but I don't like dealing with rude children who try to cheat me, either.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Ellie. ‘I don't think she's really aware of how awful she sounds, or that cheating rebounds on you. It's as if her ability to assess what impact she has on other people never really developed.’

  Miss Quicke spurted into a coarse laugh. ‘Except with men of a certain type.’

  She got to her feet, leaning on her stick. ‘Well, it's all in the genes. I was just like her at her age. Which doesn't mean I'm going to put up with the way she carries on now. I'm still backing Stewart and Maria to keep little Frank.’

  Ellie held the door open for her aunt. ‘I'm not sure how I'm going to act. I suppose it depends on whether or not Diana gets back together with Derek.’

  They walked across the courtyard but instead of going into the big house, Miss Quicke led the way round to the back garden, and seated herself on a bench in the sun. ‘I never sat out here till Rose showed me how pleasant it could be.’

  She patted the seat at her side. ‘Sit down, Ellie. Rose tells me there were all sorts of rumours going round at church yesterday, about my nephew Frank. I shouldn't be the last to hear about this from you.’

  Ellie shook her head in frustration. ‘It's a something and a nothing. Nothing you can get hold of. No one really believes it, but it's something for everyone to talk about. I don't know how the rumour started, and the police haven't been to see me about it so presumably they don't think it's important, either.’

  ‘It's a nonsense,’ said Miss Quicke. ‘Having it off with someone of the opposite sex outside marriage may be in the genes, but it seemed to have missed my nephew completely. Our own father had it, more's the pity, for it caused my poor mother no end of worry. I had it. Diana obviously has it. But I often wondered if Frank was undersexed. He never took any interest in girls while he was growing up, though I was on the lookout for it, be sure of that. He took after my brother in that. Only ever looked at you, married you and was faithful. I used to think he missed out on a lot of fun that way, but there … it takes all sorts.’

  ‘Er, yes. Bill said that, too. I never gave it a thought till the rumour started and then I did get worried for a bit, wondering if I simply hadn't noticed him straying, perhaps when I was off-colour for so long.’

  ‘His fault. He should have let you recover from having Diana before he started in on you again.’

  ‘The doctor said it was all right to-’

  ‘Doctors! I said you were anaemic at the time, didn't I? But no one listens to me. You needed an iron tonic and separate beds for a few months.’

  ‘Yes. Well. It was all a long time ago.’

  ‘You let him have his own way too much.’

  Ellie closed her eyes and leaned back, allowing the sunshine to relax her. Beside her, Aunt Drusilla sat upright, hands folded on her stick, feet planted firmly on the ground.

  At the back of Ellie's mind she heard Frank's voice, urging her to be co-operative, saying didn't she love him any more, couldn't she see what it was doing to him when she just lay there like a sack, come on, girl! Come on!

  Aunt Drusilla had been wrong about Frank being under-sexed. He hadn't been lacking in that direction with her. If he'd been a little less keen on it, perhaps she wouldn't have found sex a burden after Diana was born, instead of a pleasure.

  If he'd not been so insistent, she might have been better able to cope with all those pregnancies, all ending in disaster. Although things had been better for her and for him after the hysterectomy.

  Looking back on those years hurt. She could hardly remember any significant events, any detail from those years. She'd gone from being a cheerful little thing, ready for love, to an anxious thirty-year-old, desperately trying to please her husband and daughter and keep her job … because they'd needed her salary in those days.

  Anxiety. Yes, that was the right word for those years. Hoping against hope each month that this time she'd be able to carry the baby to term.

  ‘Silly Mummy's crying again!’ Diana, in a strop because her mother couldn't drag herself off her bed to take her to some party or other.

  Perhaps Diana would realize now what it meant to have a miscarriage. Or two. Or five. And perhaps not. Diana was too self-centred to learn from other people's mistakes.

  She slipped into prayer. ‘What a beautiful day, Lord. Thank you for it. For the sunshine which warms me and banishes unpleasant thoughts. For the flowers. For Rose's gifts of home-making and love. For Aunt Drusilla's robust attitude to life. I ought to be grateful for all the blessings you have given me. I am grateful. Really I am. Please remind me to be grateful, when little things go wrong. And please help me to say the right thing to Diana, and Stewart and Maria. I don't know what's best for little Frank, but you do.’

  The surgeon rang on time. The news was bad. ‘You say the man's dead? He can't be! Who told you?’

  The businessman said, ‘They were all talking about it in the paper shop in the Avenue. There was this big woman, something to do with the church, said she was a great friend of the widow's and how shocked they'd all been to hear he'd been accused of murder. Someone said something about there being no smoke without a fire, but no one else would have it. They said it was just like the police to get the wrong end of the stick. They seem to like the little widow. They called her “a nice little thing”.’

  ‘The man can't be dead. He wasn't that old!’

  ‘Cancer, last year, they said. Very sudden.’

  ‘You should have known!’

  The businessman defended himself. ‘Easy for you to say. Listen, it doesn't matter, does it? If he's dea
d and the police blame him for it, then that's all right, isn't it? No one will look at us. No one knows about us. We took a risk sending that email, but it's paid off, hasn't it? The case is closed and we're in the clear.’

  ‘We don't know that the case is closed. We can't risk it. You'd better keep watch, see if the police take any further action. Suppose … suppose we put it on the widow, say she was jealous of her husband's interest in the girl, and that's why she killed her?’

  ‘That's ridiculous!’

  ‘It might work. It just might. Use a computer at a different library this time. Somewhere so large and busy no one will notice you. Send an email accusing her this time. We can't risk them looking for us. For father. How is he, anyway?’

  ‘He had a bad night, but seems easier this morning. I told him there was nothing to worry about.’

  ‘You do as I say, and there won't be.’

  * * *

  Ellie walked back home through the late afternoon's sunshine. Really it was warm enough to avoid the sunny side of the road and walk in the shadows. She bought some fish for her supper and some French beans to go with it. She also bought some more freshly ground coffee for those who would be working in the church garden the following morning. She decided she wouldn't think about anything worrying, but concentrate on the beauty of the tobacco plants in a neighbour's garden, and how sweetly they scented the air as she passed.

  There was an old-fashioned double rose in a garden on the corner of her road. She paused to sniff at one of the blooms, as she did every time she passed that way.

  And there outside her house was DI Willis, sitting alone in an unmarked car, waiting for her. The policewoman got out, and stood waiting for Ellie to arrive. Both women stiffened in readiness for the encounter.

  Ellie thought of asking what the woman wanted, but really she knew so she said nothing but gestured her inside.

  DI Willis followed Ellie as she picked up the post - mostly bills - and went into the kitchen. Ellie fed Midge and stowed her purchases in the fridge.

  Ellie put the kettle on. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Either. Whichever you're having.’ The woman seemed distracted, the side of her face swollen. Toothache?

  Ellie made a pot of tea, investigated the biscuit tin, which contained more than it had done when Tod had been a frequent visitor. She poured tea out into a couple of mugs and took them through into the sitting room. She eased off her shoes and leaned back.

  DI Willis couldn't relax that much. ‘I expect you know why I've come.’ She sipped her tea, and put it down. If she did have toothache, the tea was probably too hot for her.

  Ellie shrugged. ‘I heard a rumour at church. I don't suppose you took it any more seriously than I did.’

  ‘Depends what you heard.’

  ‘What I'd like to know is who started the rumour?’

  ‘If we knew that …! It was on an email sent to the station. You must see that we had to follow it up.’ She scrabbled in her handbag for painkillers and took two, grimacing. Definitely, she'd got toothache.

  ‘So did I,’ said Ellie. ‘I enquired within myself and I asked other people who'd known my husband longer than me. Result: no, he didn't play around.’

  ‘We did check, and that's the conclusion we came to, as well.’ Ellie raised her eyebrows. ‘As I've now destroyed his reputation by asking all his friends, everyone will say the wife's the last to know, and that he must have been playing around for the rumour to have started.’

  ‘I know,’ said DI Willis, apologetically. ‘But you must see we had to check.’

  ‘I suppose so. And you're here now because …?’

  ‘You and I've never really hit it off, have we? Which is a pity, because I'm convinced that you're the key to this mystery. Or rather, that your memory contains the key.’

  ‘I've told you all I know.’

  ‘So you say. For your information, we've checked out your story about the Chaters, the people who went to Spain. You were right. He did die out there, and his widow married again. Dead end.’ ‘And the Shrieker with her noisy kids?’

  ‘Social services took the children into care. She gets reasonable access and there is some hope they will be reunited as a family in the near future. I went to see her today, and she's certainly still alive and kicking. She blames you for setting the police on to her, by the way.’

  ‘She would. In any case, the body had been in the ground far too long to belong to any of the families who lived here recently. So what's left? The woman who went to Australia or New Zealand?’

  ‘We've traced her, too. You were right to be concerned. She never left England. The man took the money from the sale of the house and disappeared on the eve of their departure. She's now living in digs in Brighton and working in a restaurant. Someone's going down to see her tomorrow. You're quite right. She's not the one. So we do have to go further back.’

  ‘The Bosnians?’

  ‘Too recent, and you know it. Ellie, we've got the names of those who lived here before the Brownings. You talked about an elderly couple. You said first he died, and then she did. Did they have any family? Children? Grandchildren?’

  Ellie's mind swam back through the years to that time. Frank shouting at her, Diana shouting at her. Constant tiredness. Work, work, work. Diana wanting this and that … Frank wanting sex, which she couldn't have cared less about at that time. No more miscarriages, though. At least the hysterectomy had put an end to that, although she had always regretted it, wondered if the doctors couldn't have found some way to let her carry her babies to term.

  The DI tapped on the table. ‘Come on, Ellie!’

  Ellie had had enough. She slipped her shoes back on and, plucking the mug out of the DI's grasp, took it out to the kitchen and tipped it down the sink. She then went to the hall and opened the front door.

  ‘I think you'd better leave.’

  ‘What?’ The DI was first amazed, then annoyed. And finally, she turned conciliatory.

  ‘Look, I wanted to do this quietly, but I could ask you to come down to the station …’

  ‘On what grounds? Just go.’

  The DI flushed an unbecoming red, then went pale. The effect against her dyed hair was not pleasant. ‘Look, I'm sorry if I … you must see that …’ She started again. ‘All right. Let's start again. I know you think this is an imposition, but this is what police work is all about. I have to ask questions. A young girl was murdered out there. We don't know who she was or where she came from. Some mother is probably still waiting for her daughter to return. Grieving for her. Hundreds of young girls go missing every year and some of them turn up in worse condition than that poor girl out there. I want to know - I need to know who that girl was. It's not only my job, you understand. It's a compulsion.’

  Ellie thought about a mother waiting to hear from a lost daughter. She wondered how she'd have felt if it had been Diana who'd gone missing. Yes, she'd have grieved. Every knock on the door might bring news. Every letter that dropped into the letterbox. Would that grieving have faded over this length of time? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Particularly if the girl had been an only child.

  ‘Do you know yet how she died?’

  ‘We can't be sure, but … some kind of garrotte, they think. That's an educated guess. The skull wasn't fractured. There was no knife left in the body. The bones of the neck might have been disarranged when it was unearthed. We really don't know, and that's the truth. So, please will you do what you can to help us?’ The woman found it hard to plead.

  Ellie gave her credit for the effort. She forced her mind to go back in time. Certain images popped up: Diana screaming for attention, the shoplifting, Frank's fury, the consternation in the office when she'd had to take time off yet again, the doctor saying, ‘I'm so sorry, Mrs Quicke, but …’

  She pushed those memories aside. The DI was right. They had to trace the girl and if she, Ellie Quicke, could help, then she must do so.

  She could do it, if she put her mind to it.

&
nbsp; Right, the elderly couple. Good neighbours, except that they hadn't had the time to deal with a garden running to ruin. Quietly spoken, gently fading like sepia photographs. She led the way back to the sitting room. ‘Ten minutes, then. And you will not call me by my Christian name again. Understood?’

  She resumed her seat, trying to remember.

  ‘Did the old people have children? Yes, I think so. A son, definitely. I think he went to live in Scotland. A daughter …? A daughter and son-in-law, who lived … not that far away. The old people's name was …?’

  ‘Cullen,’ said the DI.

  ‘Ah, yes. I'd forgotten. I can't remember their daughter's married name. The old folk had been living in a much bigger house in the Acton area, but when he retired - no, I don't think I ever knew what he did - they downsized and moved here.

  ‘She was younger, still working in the pharmacy in the Avenue then, an old-fashioned shop with old-fashioned remedies. The sort of place where you go in and say you think you've got a cold coming and what would they recommend? I think it even still had those pretty jars with coloured liquids in them in the window. They sold herbal remedies and corn plasters and knew everyone. It was old-fashioned, even then. The place was a hairdresser's after that, and now it's the Sunflower Café, where I often go for a mid-morning cuppa or a meal with a friend.

  ‘Mr Cullen was always frail, looked as if he'd go down with something in the next cold snap. She was a bustler. Always busy. Doted on her grandchildren, spoiled them, talked a lot about the son who rarely came to visit. She couldn't abide her daughter. Was always criticizing her.’

  ‘Go on,’ said DI Willis, making notes. ‘This is just what we need to know.’

  ‘There'd never been much of Mr Cullen to start with, but after he moved here he seemed not to know what to do with himself. He joined the bowls club in the park. I think he was secretary for a time. I used to see him going out all dressed in his whites, carrying his bag of bowls. But he gradually faded away, and died a couple of winters after they came. Pneumonia, heart? Something like that.

  ‘She went on bustling about. I thought she'd go on for ever, but she slipped on a patch of ice in the road one morning about a year later, and broke her leg. She was in hospital for a long time and when she came out, I hardly recognized her. She'd shrunk, you know? And walked carefully, with a Zimmer frame.