‘I'm so sorry about your father, though,’ said Ellie, sympathetically. ‘Will you be able to manage financially?’
‘We can sell the flat and that'll see him through for a few years. Luckily mother doesn't need to claim her half of the value, because our stepfather is what they call a “warm” man. Funny, you don't hear people say that nowadays, but I always think it's rather a good description of someone who keeps the wolf from the door. If the money does run out eventually, well, my brother and I have both got good jobs. Perhaps it's lucky that Trudy and I haven't had any children, or that might have been a different matter. Good of you to visit him, Mrs Quicke.’
‘You and Trudy? How did that come about?’
‘Unexpected, don't you think?’ Again, that self-deprecating charm. For the man had charm, definitely. ‘Who'd have thought that jet-setter Trudy would ever settle down with a stick-in-themud man who works for the council? We were at school together, although she was some years behind me. I hadn't seen her, or even thought about her, until one day I walked into a party and there she was. She recognized me, we got talking and realized we'd both lived in the same house at different times. That's the way it started. We didn't set out to make it a permanent arrangement. Trudy didn't seem the type and there's quite an age gap. But we've been together now for quite a while. Yes,’ he said, smiling to himself. ‘Quite a while.’
‘That's good,’ said Ellie, liking him. ‘Did you hear that the police found a body in your garden?’
He looked shocked. ‘What? But …! No, I … We don't get the local paper, just listen to the news at night last thing, and … are you sure? Who was it?’
‘I thought you might know.’
He reddened. ‘Me? You're joking.’
‘No, I'm not. She died about twenty years ago, a young girl in her teens.’
He spilt his coffee. Stared at Ellie.
He said, ‘No!’ There was horror in his eyes and voice. He'd made some kind of connection between himself and the dead girl.
Ellie took some tissues from a box on a shelf nearby and mopped up the coffee, giving him time to assimilate what he'd just heard.
A key turned in the lock. ‘I'm home!’ Trudy Cullen stood there, pretty and perky and not very tall. Like the girl in the grave.
Gerry rose to his feet in a series of jerks. He was ashen-faced. ‘Trudy. This is …’
‘Mrs Quicke, isn't it?’ Trudy advanced with outstretched hand. ‘Mum said you'd been round to visit her and promised to come again at the weekend. That was very kind of you. She can be, well, difficult.’ She looked at Gerry and registered that something was wrong. ‘What's up?’
‘I …’ He sat down as suddenly as he'd stood up. Pressed both hands over his eyes. ‘A bit of a shock. Mrs Quicke said someone had died, someone I might have known, years ago.’
‘You mean, one of your old girlfriends?’ Trudy wasn't really worried. She was concerned, yes. But not worried. She said to Ellie, ‘You wouldn't think it to look at him now, but when we met I had to beat off all the women who wanted to get into bed with him.’
He held out his hand to her and she took it, patted it. Became more concerned for him. Sat down beside him. She said, in a soft voice, ‘What is it? Whatever it is, it can't be that bad.’
He gulped. Grabbed at his self-control. Still holding Trudy's hand, he turned to Ellie. ‘For a moment there, I thought … but of course it couldn't be …!’
Ellie said, ‘You thought of someone just now. Some girl you knew once, a long time ago. When you were about seventeen? The year you left the house next door. Tell me about her.’
He spoke to Trudy. ‘Well, yes, I did know someone, but it was a schoolboy thing, came to nothing. You remember - no, perhaps you don't - but in our last year in the sixth form, some of us paired off. It was what we all did in our last year at school. You did it, too. I remember you told me how you went out with that boy who went on to music college.
‘Well, Jasreen was doing much the same subjects as me. Like me, she was aiming for university. She was the prettiest thing, dark and vivacious and, well, straightforward. We knew her parents didn't approve of her seeing me, but it didn't worry her and it didn't worry me. We went to the disco a couple of times, though she never stayed late. I took her to the pub, but she didn't drink, of course …’
‘Why, “of course”?’ asked Ellie.
He looked surprised. ‘Because she was Muslim. Her family came from Pakistan and were very religious, though Jasreen wasn't. I mean, she didn't pray or wear the headscarf or anything. She was interested in Christianity, because she said it was the only religion she knew where people were asked to look out for one another. We talked about that quite a lot. About everything. She was very bright. Beautiful, actually. We were applying to the same university and planned to go down by train together for the interviews. It was after that, that the trouble really started.
‘She came into school one day and said her family didn't want her to go to university or even to take her final school exams. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I thought she was exaggerating. But she changed. She'd say she'd meet me at the cinema and then not turn up. She started cutting classes at school. One minute she was excited about going to uni and the next she was listless, would hardly talk to me. I had a friend who was also Muslim. He said perhaps her family wanted her to marry someone back in Pakistan. I couldn't believe that she'd go along with that.
‘The last time I saw her, she walked home from school with me to my house, where we could be quiet and talk without anyone interrupting. My parents and my brother were out. Now, I don't want you to get the wrong impression. We didn't make love or anything. We hardly knew if we were in love or not, but I said that if she didn't want to go back to Pakistan, then she needn't, that I'd look after her.
‘I asked her to trust me, I said I would marry her if that was what was needed, and that if her family wouldn't let her, then she must move in with us, that my parents would look after her till we went to uni, and after that she'd be independent and could make up her mind whether she wanted to marry me or not. I said I wouldn't pressurize her in any way, but the offer was open. She wouldn't say yes, and she wouldn't say no.’
Ellie said, ‘Where did all this happen? In the garden?’
‘No. We were in the back room together though - yes - I believe I may have opened the French windows, because it was so hot.’
‘So anyone could have heard your offer.’
He stared at her. ‘I suppose so. But it was so innocent. You must believe me, Mrs Quicke.’
‘I do believe you, but others might not. Tell me what happened after that.’
‘It was getting dark, and my brother came in with my parents. They'd all been out for the evening to the cinema. When they came back in, she said she'd see me next day and ran out of the house …’
‘Did she go out of the front door, or down the back garden? Did your family see her go?’
He nodded. ‘Down the back garden, because then all she had to do was cross the Green and she'd be at the bus stop. Yes, of course they saw her. You can ask my brother or my mother. Jasreen called back to me to say that she'd give me her answer the next day at school … but she never came back to school. I never saw her again. I rang her parents, but they said she'd gone back to Pakistan to be married and that it was no business of mine. I was upset for quite a while, but then I thought she'd made her decision and I could picture her in Pakistan, married and a mother. Tell me it isn't her in the garden!’
‘I don't know,’ said Ellie. ‘Did you kill her?’
‘No!’ He turned to Trudy. ‘No, Trudy. I didn't. Believe me. I wouldn't!’
‘I believe you.’ Trudy took his hand in both of hers.
Ellie said, ‘Did you see her leave the garden?’
He gulped, understanding what she meant. ‘Well, no. I don't think I did. My parents had brought in some pizzas for our supper. They called me to eat while they were still hot. I didn't think to watch her
leave. Anyway, you couldn't see the bottom of the garden from the house, because it was terribly overgrown, as we never did a thing to it. There were bushes and shrubs and nettles, which my mother liked because they attracted butterflies. And to think my mother's turned into a keen gardener now! There was a sort of track down the garden to the alley, but I suppose anyone could have been hiding there behind the bushes, waiting for her.’
He was beginning to understand what might have happened. The lines of his face sharpened. ‘Do you think they were watching? Do you think they'd followed her? I thought she was being paranoid when she said they were watching her all the time, but … do you think that they caught up with her in our garden?’
‘What time of year was it?’
He took a deep breath. ‘September. We'd just gone back to school at the start of the September term. Most people were back from their summer holidays, but I think you were away next door, weren't you? And, of course, we moved a couple of days later to the flat where my father is now. Because of his needing to be in a wheelchair. I don't suppose any of us ever went down the garden after that. We wouldn't have any cause to. It is Jasreen, isn't it? In the garden?’
Again Ellie said, ‘I don't know, Gerry. But I don't suppose you'll be able to rest now, till you've told the police.’
He put his head in his hands, and was quiet for a while. The two women waited.
He said, ‘Yes, I've got to tell them. It might not be her, but …
I can't take the risk of it not being her. Oh, Jasreen! To think of you lying there, all this time.’
‘Where did her parents live?’
He stood up, looking lost. ‘Somewhere over towards Perivale way, I think. I never went to her house. I had her phone number once, but …’ He gestured helplessly. ‘Long gone.’
‘What was their name?’
He sought for it in his memory. ‘It's so long ago. Iqbal? Yes, I think it was Iqbal.’
‘Not Patel, then?’
He shook his head. He looked around at the pretty home which he'd been making with Trudy, and then he looked at Trudy. ‘I suppose you want to know if you reminded me of her, and yes, I suppose you did, in a way. You're like her, and not like her. I didn't love you because you looked like Jasreen, if that's what you're thinking. I love you because you're you.’
Trudy stood up, too. The top of her head reached his shoulder. ‘I know you like small, dark women. That's your style. But I'm not letting you go as easily as Jasreen did. I'll come with you to the police station, Gerry. And if necessary we'll get your brother and your mother to meet us there, too.’
A pulse twitched beneath his eye. ‘I'm in for a rough few hours though, aren't I? They're bound to think I did it. But I didn't. I swear it.’
Ellie said, ‘Shall I get my solicitor friend round to help you?’ He looked at her without really seeing her. ‘You know, Mrs Quicke, if you'd not been away on holiday, you might have seen what happened.’
Ellie nodded. She'd worked that out already.
She rang Bill and filled him in on what had been happening, and saw Gerry and Trudy off to the police station. It seemed to her that, now the girl's identity had been discovered, the murder would soon be solved. In any event, she needn't worry about it any more. So, she could go back to worrying about the usual things, such as Diana. Maria and Stewart. Roy and Aunt Drusilla and …
And getting to the church hall on time to set out the cups and saucers for coffee that evening. She looked at her watch and thought of summoning a cab, but it wasn't far and the bus went nearly all the way home. And yes, there was one coming, which she could catch if she ran for it.
Twenty
Arriving on the Green, Ellie looked around her. There was still an hour and a half before she had to be at the church hall, but though there were plenty of people about, there was no Tum- Tum - whom she really must begin to think of as ‘Thomas' - plodding across the green with his wheelbarrow full of gardening tools. Would he be at home?
She'd never yet called at the vicarage unannounced. Lots of women did, of course. Thomas had a way with him of total concentration on what you were saying. Most flattering. And somehow he'd not yet been entangled in any of the snares which the widows and spinsters of the parish had been throwing his way. Of course, many of these callers had good and sufficient reasons to demand his attention. Some didn't, though, and it was those whose names were thrown around by the gossips of the parish.
If Ellie Quicke marched into the vicarage, there would be talk. ‘Did you hear who was the latest to cry on his shoulder? That Ellie Quicke, no better than she should be, and with all those men hanging around her. I wondered how long it would be before she joined the queue to his door …’
She knew there'd be talk, but she couldn't resist going, just for once.
She rang the doorbell in the gaunt porch and wondered why they didn't pull down this damp-smelling, awkward-to-heat old house and build something modern.
Tum-Tum … Thomas … opened the door, drying his hands on a rough towel. He'd been gardening, of course. And probably listening to the woes of half the parish all day. She really ought not to intrude on his hours of leisure.
‘I've been hoping you'd call,’ he said, throwing the towel on a hall chair and ushering her into his surprisingly light and wellequipped kitchen. At least the parish had done something about the kitchen when he moved in, though they'd neglected to replace the central heating. ‘Coffee? Tea?’
‘Do you greet all your visitors this way?’ Ellie was feeling and sounding awkward. Even aggressive.
‘Only those who need to talk. The others I keep standing on the doorstep. There's a wicked draught there; it often makes them decide not to wait.’
She laughed because he expected her to. He handed her a mug of tea and gestured her to take a seat at the kitchen table. A casserole was cooking in the eye-level oven, and vegetables lay prepared on the table, ready for the pot.
Thomas scooped up vegetables and dropped them into saucepans on the stove. ‘And don't say, “I don't know where to begin.”’
She laughed again. ‘Oh, I know where to begin all right. Mea culpa. Is that a good start? It was all my fault. Or not all, but …’ She sighed. ‘I could have done a lot to help my neighbours and I didn't. It's no excuse to say I was poorly, although I was. There were times in between pregnancies when I was all right. Or more or less all right. I could have helped my neighbours, anyway.’
Bright eyes watched her over his mug. ‘Did they ask for help?’
‘Well, no. But I could at least have offered. I know that my husband didn't want me to get involved with them, but ought I to have gone along with that?’
Thomas - there, now, she had actually thought of him by his correct name - drummed his fingers on the table top. ‘Do you want me to tell you that you're a bad woman?’
‘What?’ Whatever she'd expected from him, it hadn't been that. She didn't think she was a bad woman, precisely. Not terribly good at times, but not really bad.
‘Tell me what you were doing all those years when you think you ought to have been running round looking after your neighbours.’
‘Well … I wasn't well for a lot of that time and we were really short of money, so I did what secretarial work I could at home while Diana was little, and then when she went to school, I had a regular job. I suppose you'd call Frank one of the old-fashioned kind. Supper had to be on the table at six thirty every evening, there always had to be clean shirts and clothes, clean house, everything just so. He liked everything neat and tidy. He was a neat and tidy man … oh, perhaps I shouldn't have put it quite like that.’
‘Why not? I've heard about him from other people. “Meticulous” was the word they used for him. And “family-centred”. They said he thought of you equal first with his job, his daughter and his aunt second, and the church third. Would that be about right?’
‘It seemed like I came last in his list of priorities most of the time, but … there! It's understandable. His au
nt and Diana were so noisy! I tried to keep the peace, keep the house going, keep the bills paid.’
‘Ellie the Peacemaker,’ said Thomas. ‘That's what I've heard. Ellie, who could always be relied upon to do all the jobs that nobody else wanted to do. Ellie, who put up with a bad-tempered aunt who treated her like a skivvy. Ellie, who took Mrs Dawes' washing home every week and did the ironing for her, too, when her leg was bad. Ellie, who befriended those tiresome elderly women whom nobody else would visit. Ellie, who cared for a boy from a single-parent family when his mother couldn't have cared less. Ellie, who always tries to see the best in people even when they aren't particularly likeable. Ellie, who always thinks she hasn't done enough to help other people.’
‘Oh!’ said Ellie. ‘But, I mean, who …?’
‘Or do you prefer “Ellie, the Bad Samaritan”?’
‘Well, no. But …’
‘Didn't you keep the peace at the charity shop for years? Since you left, I gather they've all been at one another's throats.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Haven't you given unconditional love to all the difficult people around you? To your aunt and your daughter, for instance?’
‘Yes, but there's only so much I can do to-’
Thomas stood up, smiling. ‘Goulash suit you? I must warn you I like it hot and there's cream going in at the last minute.’ He busied himself at the stove, while Ellie thought about what he'd said.
‘So you think I'm not so very bad, after all?’ she said, as he put a large round soup bowl in front of her, topping it with vegetables. She sniffed. ‘Wow. Can I have the recipe?’
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