Warning at One

by Ann Purser

  "Mrs. who?"

  "Mrs. Blairgowrie. She's Scottish, and lives in a house called Braeside. Opposite old Clem, which is handy."

  "Braeside?" said Gran sharply. "One of them detached villas? That rings a bell." She paused for a second or two, then turned to face Lois, leaning her back against the sink. She wiped her hands on her apron, and added, "Now I remember. Braeside was where there was that murder, years ago. Old man murdered his young wife. Stupid old fool thought he could keep her happy, and o' course he couldn't. Not even with all his money. She played around and he found out. Strangled her. He was strong enough for that!"

  "Mum! When was this?"

  "Oh, years ago. Back in the thirties. Nineteen thirties! It was all over the national papers at the time. Quite famous, Tresham was, for a while."

  "What happened to the old man?"

  "Hanged, o' course. They did in them days. And right and proper, too, in my view."

  Lois took a deep breath. "And Braeside? I suppose the old story's been forgot."

  Gran shook her head. "Never forgot," she said. "For one thing, it's known to be an unlucky house. Nobody stays there for long, and usually something bad happens to them. That's why it goes for much less than the others along there. The story's still around, however hard the estate agents try to keep it quiet."

  Lois looked at the clock. "Derek'll be home soon," she said. "Better go and get cleaned up for tea. Anything I can do, Mum?"

  Gran did not answer, but her silence was eloquent. Lois vanished upstairs.

  A WHILE LATER, THE TELEVISION IN THE SITTING ROOM MIGHT AS well have been playing to an empty room. The three people in front of it were asleep. The telephone rang loudly, and all three awoke with a start. Lois was first on her feet, and went out into the hall to answer it.

  "Mum?" It was Douglas, Lois's firstborn. He worked for an IT company in Essex, and seldom came home. But he was assiduous in keeping in touch via e-mail and telephone, and Lois always thought of him as her most dutiful child. Josie had her own little empire at the shop, and this took all her time. They saw little of Jamie, the youngest, who was a musician and found it impossible to get away.

  "Are you all right?" This was always the first thing Lois said to Douglas, and the answer was, with luck, "Fine, Mum. How're you and Dad?" This ritual over, he would come to the point. This time, he had something really important to say.

  "I've made a decision, Mum," he said. "I've thought it over carefully, and decided to give up this job and come back to Tresham. Still some jobs in IT going there, and I'd really like to be nearer home."

  "Ah," said Lois, remembering the last time he had men tioned it. Derek had not been exactly overjoyed, saying that Douglas must not think he could come back to Long Farnden and expect his mother and Gran to welcome him with open arms. They had more than enough to do already. Nor should he expect to move into their Tresham house for a peanut rent.

  Douglas was still talking, and Lois concentrated. "Last time I spoke to Gran," he said, "she mentioned that you were having trouble finding a tenant for the Tresham house. If so, could I be your tenant?"

  "I'll call your father," Lois said, passing the buck without hesitation.

  "SO WHAT DID YOU TELL HIM?" GRAN SAID AS DEREK RETURNED TO the sitting room. She was very anxious that Douglas should be encouraged to move nearer to his family. In her view, all children should stay within shouting distance of their parents, for the mutual benefit of all concerned.

  "Don't pester, Mum," Lois said. "Derek knows best where his sons are concerned." She didn't believe this for one minute, but knew how irritated Derek would be by mother-inlaw interference.

  Derek nodded. "Quite right, me duck," he said. "I told him straight. If you want to live in our house, I said, you pay the going rate and go along with all the rules and regs. O' course I said it nicely, and made sure he knew we'd be pleased to have him close by."

  "Huh! I should think so, too," Gran huffed. "I should've thought that with all that money the pair of you have got in the bank—"

  "Change the subject, Mum," Lois said quickly. They were treading dangerous ground. Derek—and she herself to some extent—was sensitive to any suggestion that they should change their careful habits just because they had won the lottery. It was up to them what they did with it. And, as Derek said often, they never knew when they might need a lump sum in an emergency.

  FOUR

  CLEM SAT IN HIS BATTERED CHAIR BY THE FRONT WINDOW, peering from behind grey net curtains at the street outside. The windows themselves were filmed over with dust, and would have been ample protection for him to watch without being seen, but the need for a concealing curtain was deeply ingrained. His old mum had always had thick lace curtains. She stared out of the same window, watching the world go by and commenting on its foolishness to anyone who would listen.

  In those days, of course, most of the women in the street would sit outside their front doors and gossip, keeping an eye on the children playing tag and hopscotch with little fear of traffic. No longer, thought Clem. The best he could do was watch people in cars going to the supermarket and the occasional resident leaving his house early in the morning and returning in the evening. The narrow street was lined with parked cars, and frequently there were jams and hooting horns and symptoms of road rage reaching Clem even when he was out in his yard attending to his cockerel.

  But now there was something new. The house opposite, Braeside, had stood empty for six months at least, but now someone had moved in. "Looks like just one old lady," he muttered, disappointed that it was nothing more exciting. A tall, heavily built man in his middle years came and went at odd times, bringing bags of supplies and taking out bundles of letters to the post- box on the corner, but he obviously did not live there.

  "She don't 'arf write a lot o' letters," he said to Satan, as he cleaned out his shed and gave him fresh grain. "Do you reckon that's her son?" Satan cocked his head on one side, straightened up, and crowed derisively. Then he flew up to his perch and sat there, hunched up resentfully, and stared at Clem.

  "What d'you want then, Cocky?" Clem said. He remembered the Meade woman offering the bird freedom and a harem of hens. Was that what his best friend wanted? Clem felt a pang of guilt, but smothered it quickly. No, the splendid cockerel was happy enough. He'd pine away and turn up his toes if he was miserable. Birds were like that. He remembered his old mum had a budgie that she doted on. When she died, no matter what Clem did, the budgie pined, wouldn't eat, and eventually Clem found him one morning lying on his back with his legs in the air.

  "There wasn't nothing left of 'im. Just a handful o' feathers," he had said to his neighbour. The neighbour was dead now, and Clem refused to think maybe his turn would come next. The new chap was a rotten substitute. He was never seen, kept his curtains drawn, and not a sound came through the wall. A dead loss, Clem considered. And o' course, the other side was empty. Was it really Satan that put off a new tenant? He didn't believe it. A sensible person would come along soon.

  Nothing interesting was happening over the road, and Clem thought he might as well make himself a cup of tea. But as he got up to go into his kitchen, a young bloke carrying a bag of what looked like tools walked up to the front door of Braeside and knocked. Clem sat down again, and moved the net curtain a fraction of an inch to one side.

  After a minute or two, the door opened and he saw the old lady standing there, holding on to her stick. He'd seen her in the little square of front garden with a white stick, and assumed she was blind. She was smiling, and stood back to let the man walk in, and then the door was shut. Clem hadn't seen him parking a car or a van, and supposed he'd left it in the supermarket car park. Everybody did that, even if they weren't going in to shop.

  Clem went off to make tea quickly, so that he could get back to his observation post as soon as possible. He wanted to see the man coming out, when he could nip out of his front door and watch where he went. Maybe get a clue to what he was doing over there. Might be one of them
what preyed on old ladies, he thought.

  MRS. BLAIRGOWRIE LED THE WAY TO HER KITCHEN, AND SAT down by the scrubbed wooden table. "Now," she said, "why don't you sit down while I tell you what I want done. What was your name again? Mrs. Meade did tell me, but my mind is like a sieve these days. Old age is a wretched thing!" She laughed and pointed to a chair.

  "I'm Bill Stockbridge, and I've worked for Mrs. M and New Brooms for quite a while. I also work at the vets, so I don't do cleaning work for as many hours as some of the girls, but I love it. I get teased a bit, as you can imagine, but I'm used to that. I can assure you I'll do a good job. And," he added, "I won't sit down, if you don't mind. Mrs. M has strict rules, and we're allowed a coffee break halfway through the morning, if convenient for the client."

  "Oh, yes, that'll be fine, if you could make it yourself, and one for me, when you're ready. As you've probably been told, I am nearly blind and not too good with kettles and boiling water and so on." Her voice was hoarse, as if she had a bad sore throat. Bill could see what she meant by the wretchedness of old age. He wondered briefly how she managed when left alone, but listened carefully to her instructions and then set to work.

  The house was dark and stuffy, but clean. Bill looked around and thought how nice it would be if the whole place was given a coat of sparkling white paint. Open a few windows, too. They were streaky on the outside, where a lazy window-cleaner had done a bad job. Inside they were dusty, and he began to clean them, planning to suggest he bring a ladder and do the outsides as well next time. Mrs. Blairgowrie had mentioned her son, who lived a few miles away and came in regularly. He brought her shopping and an hour or two of companionship. He obviously didn't do much else.

  The furniture was an odd mixture of old and new, some well-made and some gimcrack. Bill polished a large dressing table, carved intricately around the mirror, with bevelled glass and drawers that opened and shut as if on silk. It wouldn't do for me, he thought, but it must have cost a packet when new. Could be picked up for a song now, he reckoned. Then he moved on to a bedside locker that had clearly come flat-packed and was held together with glue. The front of the little drawer drooped to one side where the peg holding it had broken.

  "The whole place," Bill said to his wife, Rebecca, that evening, "looked like it had been bought from secondhand shops in a job lot. The old lady can't see much, of course, but I reckon she's used to a better kind of life than Gordon Street. There are good bits here and there, but it's a right ragbag otherwise."

  They sat with supper trays in front of the television, with the sound turned down low. Their small daughter, Louise, was asleep upstairs, and they were anxious not to wake her. She went to playgroup every morning, while Rebecca taught parttime in Waltonby village school, and Bill filled every hour of his day with hard, physical work. Both had valued their quiet evenings, uninterrupted by a small girl wide awake and raring to go, and now both realised that soon their nights would once more be disturbed by a new member of the family.

  "What's she like, this Mrs. Blairgowrie? Isn't that the name of a place in Scotland?"

  "Yeah. She's Scottish, though the accent seems more like Irish sometimes. She's okay. Followed me about for a while. Checking up, I suppose."

  "That's odd," said Rebecca. "How could she check up on you if she can't see?"

  Bill shrugged. "Dunno," he said. "Not my business really. I just do the job as well as possible. I expect Mrs. Meade will want to know how it went," he added, and right on cue, the telephone rang.

  "Thought you might ring," Bill said. "It all went well. Funny place, though." He told her about the furniture and about Mrs. Blairgowrie following him around. Lois asked him rather sharply if he'd noticed anything strange about the house itself— the atmosphere—was it welcoming?— that sort of thing.

  "Not like you to be worried about atmospheres, Mrs. M!" He laughed. "Anyway, men don't notice such things. I leave that to the girls. It's a straightforward job, and the old duck was very pleasant when I left. Thanked me a lot. Said she looked forward to seeing me again. In a manner of speaking . . ."

  FIVE

  IN HIS CHILLY, STERILE HOUSE, DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR Hunter Cowgill looked wearily through the Daily Mail whilst he ate his porridge and toast. He hated porridge, but his late wife had insisted that it was good for his cholesterol level, and so he was in the habit of soaking the oats in water overnight and boiling up the sticky mess next morning. A little salt was the only flavour he added. His wife had been a porridge purist.

  Once or twice lately he'd stretched out a hand to take down a packet of Chocopops from the supermarket shelf, but her stern face had appeared before him and he'd withdrawn hastily.

  And here's me, he said to himself as he forced down the last spoonful, legendary villain catcher, a hard man among hard men, still nervous of his dead wife. He sighed, and carried on reading, mostly the crime reports, but occasionally allowing himself a quick glance at the newspaper's page three girl.

  This reminded him of Lois Meade. Not that he'd ever seen

  her in the nip, worse luck, but a chat with her might cheer him up. She was one of his most useful informers in that area of the county, though he could not really call her an informer, since she had refused money for snooping—as she called it— from the beginning.

  "Hello, Lois? It's—"

  "I know who it is. What d'you want?" Lois was in the middle of calculating wages, and she frowned.

  "And how are you?" Cowgill continued, smiling. Still the same Lois, thank goodness. He hadn't any particular crime to discuss with her, but some suspected villainy, and keeping a conversation going was part of his job. "How is the business going? I drove past New Brooms' office yesterday, and several cars were parked outside. Looked good."

  "There're no parking restrictions, are there?" said Lois defensively. "So what else?"

  "Nothing like that," Cowgill replied, "but I have heard there's a proposal to restrict Sebastopol Street to residents' parking. Hasn't gone through yet, though. I'll keep you informed about that."

  "Is that what you rang about?" Lois said, trying desperately to remember where she had got to in her columns of figures.

  "No. It was nothing specific. Just wondered if you had anything to report. Anything we could nip in the bud before it became a major problem. You know the kind of thing. Gangs of yobs—sorry—gangs of disillusioned young people suffering from boredom and lack of parental love. Stealing from old people, breaking windows, crashing cars, generally causing mayhem. Any of those?"

  "Not a lot in Long Farnden." Lois grinned reluctantly. He could be quite a funny old trout. "Mind you," she added, remembering the hit-and-run merchants who'd mowed down Dot Nimmo, one of her team of cleaners, "mind you, I reckon Tresham has more than its fair share of thugs. Them back streets— plenty of trouble there. But still, you'd know all about that."

  "Only too well," Cowgill said. "Well, anyway, Lois, keep in touch. Let me know if you have any problems with the office in Sebastopol—or your little house in Gordon Street. It's quite a colourful area around there. I expect you've seen the local?"

  "How did you know I've got a house in Gordon Street?" Lois said sharply, ignoring his question. "No," she added, "don't tell me. Cowgill has eyes everywhere. The scourge of the shires, they call him. By the way, here's something you won't know. My Douglas is coming back to this area— may take on the Gordon Street house."

  "A wise decision, from what I hear."

  "Is there anything you don't hear?" said Lois, scarlet with fury. "I'm busy," she added, "so don't bother me again unless you've got something important to ask." She replaced the phone before he could answer, and glared at her computer screen. She accidentally touched the wrong key, and the whole lot went blank.

  "Bugger it!" she exploded, and decided to go down to the shop to cool off and have a word with Josie.

  LONG FARNDEN'S NARROW MAIN STREET WAS BUSY THIS SUNNY morning. The old ironstone houses glowed on either side, and the nice old man from Beeches
Farm was sweeping mud off the pavement. Lois saw Rebecca Stockbridge with a couple of schoolchildren from Waltonby heading for the shop, and they met at the steps.

  "Morning, Mrs. M!" Rebecca said cheerily. "Say good morning to Mrs. Meade, children," she added, and they dutifully chorused their greeting.

  "Going shopping?" Lois asked. She knew there was no shop in Waltonby. "Something special on at school?"

  Rebecca shook her head. "No, we're just doing a bit of practical arithmetic," she answered. "Luke here has a shopping list, and Kate has a purse full of money. I often do this with the children, and Josie knows the routine. She lets the children add up the purchases and pay the bill. I stay in the background. You'd better go first, Mrs. M. We might take a while!" She moved the children to make way, and Lois said casually, "What did Bill think of Mrs. Blairgowrie?"

  "Didn't he tell you?" Rebecca had overheard the conversation between Bill and Lois. Why was Mrs. M asking for more?