Murder in the Garden

by Veronica Heley

  He held up two fingers. ‘Second odd thing. You've been most helpful with your thumbnail sketches of all the people who've lived next door. We've been checking them all out and everybody's accounted for. Which means that the girl didn't live next door but was dumped there after she was killed.

  ‘Three. We widened the search to look through the files of all the teenage girls who went missing about that time. No one of her description was ever reported missing. We've looked at hundreds of photos, descriptions, addresses, and though there's plenty of teenage girls go missing every year, we haven't been able to match this one up with a name … and no, I won't tell you why we're so sure about that, but take it from me, this girl's not been reported missing. She's not only a Jane Doe, she's dropped from another planet.’

  ‘A student from abroad?’

  ‘There weren't so many twenty years ago, but yes, we're working on that line too. In fact, if we can't get an ID soon, that's the way her file will be shelved.’

  ‘Which means her mother will never know what happened to her.’

  ‘True. So I suggested tackling it from a different angle. Why was the girl dumped in the garden next door? What made it so attractive to the murderer?’

  Ellie nodded. ‘The garden was neglected. They thought no one would notice if they put the body there.’

  ‘Right. It's not far off a main road. It's secluded. Someone could have parked their car by the church or even taken it into the alley, with a bit of a squeeze, and left the body in the first neglected garden they came to.’

  She shivered. ‘That's horrible, but yes, it makes sense. The next rainfall washed earth down the slope over her, and gradually over the years she got buried deeper and deeper? Oh. No. That can't be how it happened. She'd been properly buried, hadn't she?’

  He held up his fourth finger. ‘As you say, she'd been properly buried. So where did the tools come from to bury her, eh?’

  Ellie's head turned to the garden. ‘From our garden shed?’ They went to look out of the conservatory, down the garden to where the shed stood, tucked into the corner by the gate to the alley.

  He leaned against the window. ‘I've been walking up and down that alley and time and again I've stopped by your garden, admired the flowers and looked at the shed. It's within touching distance from the alley. I tested your garden gate. It isn't locked.’

  ‘No. We put a padlock on it when we first came, to stop Diana straying out into the alley when she was a toddler, but once she could climb over …’ Ellie shrugged. ‘I suppose I ought to get a padlock put on it now for security reasons, but it's convenient for neighbours to drop in that way.’

  ‘There's a padlock on the door of the shed now. Quite a new one. Solid. Do you always lock up?’

  ‘Mostly, yes. I don't always remember, but I do try to lock it at night.’

  ‘And in the past?’

  ‘In the past. No. That shed's newish. When we first came, there was a ramshackle old box of a shed there, falling apart. We didn't bother to lock it, because the door wouldn't close properly and there wasn't really anything to steal. A push mower, a spade and fork, lots of old pots, cobwebs.’

  ‘Can you remember when you replaced the shed?’ He was carefully not looking at her, but she could feel the tension in him.

  She could see the significance of his question, and where it might be leading her. ‘The old shed burned down while we were at the seaside one summer holiday. We assumed it was a tramp, taking shelter. You're saying that …’

  ‘Someone might have used your tools to bury the girl and then set light to the shed to hide any traces.’

  ‘A tramp?’ she said, sitting down rather suddenly. ‘I thought the girl might have been on the streets, right at the beginning. Someone who'd run away from home and was living rough.’

  ‘In which case, she'd have been burned to death in the shed, not buried in next door's garden. She wasn't buried in your garden, because it's open to the skies, carefully tended and full of flowers. Nobody could dig a grave in your garden without it being spotted straight away. She was buried next door, where she wouldn't easily be found, which means someone didn't want her body found.’

  Oh. This boy was really very bright.

  He said, ‘Now, can you remember which year the shed burned down?’

  She looked away from him. She could and she couldn't. She didn't want to think about that time … that terrible time, the worst time of her life … the doctor saying, ‘I'm so sorry.’ And Diana … well, the police hadn't been called in, although the other parents had wanted to …

  She switched her mind away. ‘I'm not sure. The years run into one another after a while. It may have been Diana's last year at primary school.’

  ‘We can probably get the dates from your insurance company. You were insured, weren't you? You did claim for the loss of the hut?’

  ‘I'm not sure. We probably didn't bother. I mean, it was such an old wreck. Anyway, Frank, my husband, would have seen to all that.’

  He said, ‘What are you hiding?’

  She jumped. ‘Nothing!’ He was altogether too bright, this lad. ‘Look,’ she said, turning into the kitchen. ‘They're coming back up from the church. Do you want to stay, or have you something better to do?’

  ‘I'll go now. Come back later. Because, you see, Mrs Quicke, there's one more odd thing about this case. How did the killer know about that neglected garden? How did he know where to leave the body and where to find the tools to bury it? How does the killer know your name?’

  ‘He doesn't. He can't. You said yourself the girl had nothing to do with this area.’

  ‘No, that's not what I said, and you know it. I'll come back later, shall I?’

  He went out of the front door as the others piled in through the back. Then it was all hustle and bustle and overloud voices as the gardening party arrived for their coffee and chat.

  Mrs Dawes seated herself in the big armchair while Tum-Tum made himself useful pouring out coffee and handing biscuits. Ellie dropped a spoon on the floor, picked it up and dropped it again.

  ‘Not like you, Ellie,’ said Tum-Tum. He followed her out to the kitchen. ‘Are you all right? Shall I pop back for a bit this afternoon?’ ‘Mrs Dawes is staying on to hear all about the body in the garden. Payment for doing coffee on Sunday for me.’

  He nodded and didn't press the point. She wanted to burst into tears and throw herself on his manly chest. She was surprised how much she wanted it. Ridiculous! She was acting like any woman in trouble, flinging herself at the nearest man. She despised such women even though she understood them. She'd been one of them herself before Frank died. The number of times she'd said, ‘I'll have to ask my husband about that!’ It made her cringe to think of it.

  She didn't feel like that with Roy or with Bill. She only felt like that with Tum-Tum because he was a man of the cloth and had a warm, soothing presence and broad shoulders and didn't want either to take advantage of her or marry her.

  She found her handkerchief, blew her nose and attended to her guest's wants.

  They were arguing, of course, about whether they should cut the flowers in the herbaceous border to decorate the church for Harvest Festival, or whether they should leave them there, to add to the beauty of the church on the day.

  Mrs Dawes was all in favour of cutting them. Ellie wasn't. Amiable argument followed, with Tum-Tum taking no part in it, but laughing when anyone made a particularly telling point.

  Ellie was very fond of Tum-Tum, but looking at his rounded body across the room, she wondered at her momentary desire to feel his arms go around her. He was - sigh - no one's idea of a perfect partner.

  Mrs Dawes stayed on after the others made their excuses and left. Ellie brought out the sherry bottle, Mrs Dawes' usual tipple. ‘Now, tell me All!’

  Ellie mentally expunged various aspects of the situation from her mind. The policeman would know who'd talked within hours if Mrs Dawes got hold of one or two juicy items. But there was still enoug
h for Mrs Dawes to say, ‘Gracious me!’ several times. She wondered aloud when they'd all be able to leave the house again without worrying about being mugged. Though what the murder had to do with Mrs Dawes' chances of being mugged, Ellie really didn't know.

  Mrs Dawes was a shrewd lady, even if her tongue was sometimes hinged in the middle. When Ellie had finished, she said, ‘I've been wondering who it might be, too. Like you, I couldn't think of any young or even youngish girl living in that house. I was saying to my friends …’

  Ellie had a mental image of Mrs Dawes and her two friends with their heads close together, exchanging gossip.

  ‘… that between us we should be able to remember who lived there. Two of us were born here I won't say how many years ago, and my friend from the next road came here in '65. We've seen some changes, I can tell you. Years ago the school here wasn't very good and you hardly saw any young families around. Nowadays the school's top of all these league tables they keep talking about in the papers, and there's nothing but young families coming in to buy our houses and put up loft extensions and build out their kitchens at the back.’

  Ellie smiled, and nodded. She'd noticed the change herself. If ever Kate and Armand got down to having a family, they'd be typical of the people who'd bought into the neighbourhood.

  Mrs Dawes leaned across to test the soil in a pot in the conservatory. The day had clouded over and, with the sun veiled, it wasn't too hot to sit there, as it usually was in the afternoons. ‘That's a pretty geranium, Ellie. You must give me a cutting. And of the tibouchina, too. I've got a sheltered spot where it could stay through the winter, and it does give colour in late autumn when everything else is dying down.’

  Ellie nodded.

  Mrs Dawes patted her improbably jet-black hair. ‘We came to the conclusion that the girl was a visitor to the Cullens'. You remember? The old couple who retired here, she worked in the pharmacy in the Avenue, nice enough woman. Their grandchildren were over here a lot after school, because their mother worked up at the Town Hall, didn't she? My friend remembers seeing her there one day and it gave her quite a start, because when you don't expect to see people you don't recognize them, do you?’

  ‘I'd forgotten that. I remembered there were two grandchildren, both girls, and they used to come over …’

  ‘To keep tabs on the old biddy, we reckoned. Couldn't wait to get her into a home so they could sell the house. But she clung on, didn't she? Used to come to Women's Guild sometimes, moaning, always moaning about her greedy daughter, and how she wanted to sell up and move down to a nice little flat on the front at Eastbourne …’

  Ellie winced, remembering how Diana had always had greedy eyes on her mother's house.

  ‘… but then she fell, and that was the beginning of the end. My friend used to visit her and Mrs Cullen was ever so grateful. But after a while those pesky grandchildren were always there, saying Gran didn't need anything and was too tired to see visitors. They used to boss her around, speak to her loudly as if she were deaf and dumb, you know. Needed their backsides tanning, if you ask me.’

  ‘I'd forgotten that, too. I did go round there myself a couple of times, but … yes, you're quite right. I never got further than the front door.’

  Mrs Dawes shook her head. ‘You never know what goes on behind people's front doors, do you?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And they - the grandchildren - they had friends staying over. I know because my friend called one time and there were three of them giggling in the hall, in their school uniforms, but with overnight bags. Sleeping over, they call it.’

  ‘I didn't know about that. Although …’ Ellie thought back. ‘Come to think of it, we did used to hear a lot of pop music through the party wall. I said it was odd at the time, because you wouldn't have thought Mrs Cullen would want to have pop music on. And so loudly, too.’

  ‘I don't say there was anything really wrong in the girls stopping over,’ said Mrs Dawes, doing her best to be fair-minded. ‘But what I do say is, they were taking advantage, out from under their parents' eyes. Old Mrs Cullen ought to have sold up and gone down south, spent the money on a nice nursing home place, ended her days in peace.’

  Ellie sat very still. Did Mrs Dawes mean …?

  ‘I'm not hinting they did for her,’ said Mrs Dawes. ‘No. Maybe a sleeping tablet too many? But she did go quickly at the end, didn't she?’

  ‘She was worn out,’ said Ellie, hoping it had been true.

  ‘Maybe so. But we talked it over, and my friend said she still got a Christmas card every year from the daughter. There was a husband once, but he disappeared when the girls were little, and she went back to calling herself Cullen, for which I can't blame her. Anyway, my friend found her last card, where she said she was selling the house and moving to sheltered accommodation, a one-bedroom flat at the back of the Avenue. She's not that old but she's had breast cancer and it's taken it out of her. So my friend gave her a ring and arranged for us to go over there this afternoon.’

  Thirteen

  Ellie was amused. Was Mrs Dawes fancying herself as a private detective?

  Yes, Mrs Dawes was definitely enjoying herself. She was in the happy position of being able to poke and pry without being in any way emotionally involved. Ellie, however, was beginning to feel that she'd been partly to blame for all the misery that the next-door house had seen.

  She ought to have realized that old Mrs Cullen was being treated unkindly - if that is what had happened. She ought to have made a greater effort to see her. She ought not to have let Frank dissuade her from making neighbourly gestures.

  At that moment she almost hated her husband. Then she sighed, because, after all, that was the way he'd been brought up, to keep himself to himself, never to go into debt with money or people. Who was to say he was wrong? He hadn't actually seen anything untoward happening.

  Ellie offered Mrs Dawes another drop of sherry. ‘You know, Mrs Dawes, I really don't think we can interfere in a police investigation.’

  ‘It's not interfering to visit an old friend who's asked to keep in touch, poor thing. She must be lonely nowadays, with both girls grown up and settled. Knowing them, they'll hardly bother to visit their mother. Think of this visit as an act of charity.’

  ‘If you put it like that …’

  Mrs Dawes drained her glass, gathered herself together, checked that her hair was smooth, that both her dangling earrings were in place, and stood up. ‘I think we'd better get a cab to take us there, though. I'm not sure my legs are up to a walk.’

  Ellie meekly phoned for a cab while Mrs Dawes tested the earth in every container in the conservatory and peered at the fish swimming in the lead tank. ‘That plumbago needs a drop more water, dear. Don't forget to do it when you get back.’

  Ms Cullen's new address was in a quiet, tree-lined road on the far side of the shops, not too far from Miss Quicke's house. It was a purpose-built block of one-bedroom and studio flats with warden accommodation attached. There was limited car parking. Ms Cullen was a faded blonde with a deeply lined face. She recognized Ellie and Mrs Dawes at once and said how little they'd changed over the years, but they could hardly say the same of her. She had shrunk into herself, and her voice was querulous. Ellie was rather unpleasantly reminded of how old Mrs Cullen had looked in the last few months of her life.

  Her daughter was not that old. Possibly sixty? But looking seventy.

  Ms Cullen was a complainer. She moaned happily about her new flat - always either too hot or too cold and one of the windows wouldn't open, and she didn't know how many times she'd told them about it. She criticized the meals on wheels, which wouldn't deliver daily any more, but you had to have a freezer and a microwave and prepare them yourself, and of course nobody but nobody ever came near you at weekends. She complained about the hospital cancelling one of her appointments, and the new district nurse who came to see to the ulcer on her leg, which wouldn't heal properly, no matter what.

  Mrs Dawes and Ellie had
nothing to do but listen and say, ‘Oh dear,’ now and then. The living room was overcrowded with furniture and smelled of medication. There were no plants in evidence, but a great many souvenirs from long ago trips to Ireland and Spain.

  ‘The girls bring them back for me, you know,’ said Ms Cullen, seeing Ellie look at a Spanish flamenco dancer doll.

  ‘How are they keeping?’ asked Ellie, wondering if they'd be offered a cup of tea, and deciding that she wouldn't much want to accept, even if it were offered.

  ‘Both married, I'm thankful to say. Well, one of them's with a partner, if you know what I mean, but they're all the same nowadays, aren't they? Need their space, as they call it. Neither of them do I see from one week's end to the other, especially since I moved here, which the doctor said I should, and it's not that far for them to come, especially as they've both got cars of their own.’

  ‘No grandchildren yet, then?’ said Mrs Dawes, bright eyes taking everything in. There were photographs in silver frames - rather tarnished silver frames - on a side table. One girl in a wedding dress with a toothy groom behind her. Another of a girl in a very low-cut dress, holding a balloon and looking rather the worse for wear. Two other photographs were of Ms Cullen's elderly parents, probably taken before he retired. Ellie leaned forward to have a closer look. Had the photograph been taken next door to her? No, probably not. The house - what she could see of it behind the couple - looked stockbrokerish.

  ‘Too selfish to have children,’ pronounced Ms Cullen. ‘I've said to them, time and again, what will you do when you're old like me and have no one to look after you? But they don't listen.’

  Mrs Dawes agreed. ‘No, the young ones don't listen.’

  Ellie hated being in this flat. There was something cloying in the air, almost stifling. All the windows were fast shut, yet it was a beautiful afternoon outside. ‘It must be nice for you to know they're not far away, though. It means they can keep up with their old friends from school, people they grew up with.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mrs Dawes, picking up the reference to the girls' old friends. ‘Now, who was that girl your eldest was so friendly with? It's on the tip of my tongue, it will come to me in a minute …’