Strangers at the Gate

by Catriona McPherson

  She was pointing at the corkboard on the wall behind the desk. It was perfectly clear, except for a single white envelope, pinned by one corner. ‘To Whom It May Concern’ was written on it in a spidery hand.

  ‘It concerns all of us,’ Julie said. She reached between Abby’s shoulder and mine and plucked the envelope. Then she shoved her thumb under the flap and rucked it open.

  ‘Should we … fingerpri—’ I said, but Julie was already speaking.

  ‘“Friends and colleagues. It would be redundant to say by the time you read this we will be dead. We tried to remedy the great sadness of my past with good works and we have failed. We have hidden that failure for too long and, heartsick and bone weary, we now choose to depart this cold world rather than see out the sorry dregs of our burdensome lives. Forgive us. L and T.”’

  ‘Is that all?’ Abby said, but Julie was turning the top sheet over to read a second page.

  ‘This is his will,’ she said, and her eyes grew round.

  ‘Read it,’ I said. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘“My dear wife having predeceased me, I, Lovatt Dudgeon, being of sound mind, voluntarily bequeath all my worldly possessions, including the Dudgeon family estate and the law firm of Dudgeon, Dudgeon and Lamb to Pascal David Fleming and his issue born and yet to be born, in perpetuity.”’

  I felt my throat close.

  ‘Who the hell’s that?’ said Abby. ‘Did he get it witnessed? God, don’t tell me Tuft witnessed it, did she?’

  ‘No,’ said Julie, squinting at the paper in her hands. ‘It was witnessed by a Josephine Mary Doyle.’

  ‘Who the hell’s that?’ said Abby. ‘Julie, have you ever heard of a Josephine Doyle?’

  They didn’t ask me, newcomer that I was.

  Julie was reading the top sheet again. ‘What does it mean “redundant”?’ she said. ‘How could it be redundant to say you were dead?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said carefully, ‘they never dreamed we would come snooping. Maybe they thought their bodies would be found before anyone came into the house.’

  Julie clicked her fingers. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s right. Oh, my God, though. Where are the bodies? Where are they that they thought they’d surely be found?’

  I shrugged. ‘Search me,’ I said steadily. ‘I don’t know the area and I don’t know where they’d be likely to go. Favourite picnic spot? Favourite walk, maybe? If their car’s gone, maybe they went and parked somewhere quiet and fed a pipe in the window.’

  Julie put her hands up to her mouth and pressed them in hard. Her eyes were wide and shone with unshed tears.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Oh, my God, that’s awful.’

  It was. It was so awful it stopped her thinking about who Pascal and Josephine might be.

  * * *

  They were fizzing all the way back down the drive, dead set on dialling 999 to get the cops out searching for two bodies. But Paddy was their boss and they’d both lose their jobs if things went toes up at the firm. So when he read over the note and the will, managing not to react to ‘Pascal’ and ‘Josephine’, then said he wanted to think it over before he did anything, they took it. Grudgingly, but they took it.

  Once they were gone, we sat and stared at each other. Where to start?

  ‘What happened to Shannon?’ I said at last.

  ‘She had a booking for her SAD light,’ Paddy said. ‘Her phone dinged and she took off.’

  ‘Sure it was for the SAD light?’ Then I shook my head at his frown. ‘Not important. So. You see what that note means, don’t you? If that’s Lovatt’s writing, it makes it look as if they really did kill themselves.’ Whoever it was was no one and we were safe again.

  ‘She stabbed him and then he stabbed her,’ Paddy said. ‘Back to what we thought.’

  ‘But why all those gashes on her hands? If she agreed to it?’

  ‘Lost her nerve?’

  ‘But she got it back, didn’t she? To put the knife in him like that?’

  ‘What an absolutely unbelievably horrible way to kill yourself,’ Paddy said. ‘Why make it look like murder when you’re leaving a suicide note anyway?’

  ‘And you see what “redundant” means, don’t you? They were supposed to be right there on the floor in the same room as the note. No one was supposed to move them. Who the hell moved them and didn’t raise the alarm?’

  Paddy shrugged miserably.

  ‘Oh, God, Paddy. When you went back to get the Christmas cactus, why couldn’t you have had a look round and noticed the envelope?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

  I stared at him. I had no idea. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and pull a duvet over my head. I smiled at him instead. ‘Fancy a cheese toastie, an orange and a cup of cocoa?’ I said. It was our code for wanting to run away. I teased Paddy about how he could always get a day off work by giving himself a migraine when I had to go to all the bother of acting. He usually smiled and sometimes even laughed. This time he did neither. His cheeks flushed slightly and he leaped up to fetch a cup of tea.

  Watching his back through the two open doors, as he filled the kettle and gathered cups, I could feel an idea chasing around the back corners of my mind.

  ‘Why would a lawyer leave a will that’s so full of holes?’ I asked, when he came back a few minutes later, pushing a mug into my hands.

  ‘Holes?’ said Paddy. ‘I take it Julie and Abby didn’t twig who “Josephine Doyle” is, by the way?’

  ‘They didn’t,’ I said. ‘No one down here knows I sometimes use my maiden name and they probably think Finnie’s short for Frances.’

  ‘And Paddy for Patrick,’ he said. ‘But what “holes”?’

  ‘Are you kidding? For one, Tuft didn’t pre-decease him, so there’s that.’

  ‘But we’re not supposed to know that,’ said Paddy. ‘If we hadn’t seen them minutes after they died we wouldn’t.’

  I frowned at him. ‘What difference would it make when we saw them?’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Eh?’ he said. ‘Look, never mind that. What are the other holes?’

  ‘I didn’t witness it,’ I said. ‘It’s not legal, because however they got something that looks like my signature on that piece of paper, I did not witness Lovatt’s will.’

  ‘Unless you did,’ Paddy said. ‘It must have been among the papers you signed after dinner on Monday night.’

  ‘But I didn’t witness Lovatt signing,’ I said. ‘You just went. “Paw-print, Finn!” and I wrote my name.’

  ‘You’re the only one who knows that.’

  ‘And anyway,’ I said, ‘what’s the point, when he got your name wrong?’

  ‘He didn’t get my name wrong,’ Paddy said. His breathing was too fast and he wasn’t sitting still. He was bouncing in his chair and his elbows were flapping in the strange way they sometimes do when he’s in some kind of turmoil. It’s not exactly a tic, but I always wondered if it was some faint ghost of something like epilepsy. Or related to the migraines anyway. ‘He got my name right. He must have had to dig deep to find it. And he wouldn’t have done all that if the will wasn’t watertight.’

  ‘Dig deep? What’s “Fleming”?’ I said. ‘Your birth name? Doesn’t adoption wipe that out?’

  ‘What?’ said Paddy. ‘Yes, of course it does. Fleming’s my mum. She uses her married name – you know what she’s like – so I use it too. But she was born Elayne Fleming and so, adopting me after her divorce, I’m Paddy Fleming. Technically.’

  Even in the middle of everything, I felt a shift inside me. ‘How did I not know your name?’ I said. ‘On our marriage certificate, you’re Lamb. Is that legal?

  ‘Are we married, you’re asking?’ Paddy said. ‘Of course we are! But speaking of legal, we can defend this will, Finnie. We can fight for what Lovatt wanted to give me.’

  ‘Paddy, we can’t,’ I told him. ‘If you benefit they’re going to have a good hard look at you as the pot
ential killer. And we were there. And then we went back in and then you went back in again. And we were so stupid – this only just occurred to me, but it’s true. We wiped the prints from when we went back, but not from when we sat and ate dinner. Do you see?’

  ‘But you’ve been back in today,’ said Paddy.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I wiped round when I went back for the cactus,’ he said. ‘Round the chair where I sat. Round the drinks tray in the dining room.’

  I stared at him. ‘Is that why you wanted me to go with Julie and Abby?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Look, Paddy … Really think about it. If you try to benefit from that will we’re going to end up getting done for murder. I think you should put in your notice and I will too and we’ll just go.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Paddy said. ‘We own that gorgeous house now. We own this house! And the cottages. And the firm!’ He was getting wild, a sheen of sweat on his brow and a glitter in his eyes I couldn’t remember ever seeing before.

  ‘Pad, Pad,’ I said, putting a hand on his nearest arm. ‘The will’s no good. I didn’t witness it. Even if we get round the wrong name, you won’t inherit anything. So it’s not worth raising suspicions.’

  ‘Suspicions of what?’ he said. ‘They killed themselves. We thought that all along and we just decided it again!’

  ‘Not all along,’ I said. ‘Only until whoever it was sent a fax and an email after the Dudgeons were dead. And now someone’s moved the bodies too. It’s time to face facts.’

  ‘What facts?’

  ‘He had a knife in his back! Who does that?’ I screwed up my eyes as the gauze began to fall again. I knew I was whimpering and I couldn’t help it. That black stain spreading around the knife handle – why was that the sharpest image of all? It wasn’t, for all the horror, Tuft’s open mouth or clouded eyes. It wasn’t the bright creases of blood drying in her gashed hands. It wasn’t the hideous jauntiness of that pleated skirt swinging up at the side. It was the black butterfly. I started talking again just to make the picture go away.

  ‘Whoever it was held a knife to Tuft’s throat and told that poor old man what to write in the suicide note,’ I said.

  ‘And he loved his wife so much he did it,’ said Paddy.

  ‘Then whoever it was killed them both anyway.’

  ‘And pinned the note to a corkboard with a will leaving everything to me in the same envelo— Why are you looking at me like that?’

  I blinked. I hadn’t known it was showing on my face. ‘Was it you?’ I found myself saying. ‘Did you move them when you went to get the cactus? Is that why you wouldn’t talk about it?’

  ‘Move them where?’ Paddy said. ‘You think maybe they’re in the shed out the back? Go and look. You think they’re in the boot of the car? We better not do a big shop, eh?’

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Stop it. Don’t be so horrible.’

  ‘Me horrible? Where’s this coming from?’

  ‘How did you know the note was pinned to a corkboard?’

  Paddy blinked too. ‘You told me.’

  ‘I don’t think I did.’

  ‘Someone told me. You or Julie or Abby. Someone definitely mentioned it. I think.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe it’s just because there’s a pinhole in one corner and I assumed. What does it matter? Finnie, seriously. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Because,’ I said, ‘you’re the most honest person I know.’

  His face clouded over.

  ‘I thought it was funny when you wangled us moving here,’ I said. ‘You were so bad at pretending you hadn’t seen the house already. And you mucked up saying you’d been there for lunch. I thought it was sweet. Like a puppy barking at a mirror. Because you’re the most honest person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’d never hide anything from you.’

  ‘Except three years on an oil rig to pay off a loan to cover up—’

  ‘Not to cover up,’ he said. ‘To make good. That’s what turned me honest. Like your thing turned you … What? Serious? Moral?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. But something else was troubling me. With a flash that seemed so real I closed my eyes against it, I was on my feet and through to the hall. I fished in the bin by the coat pegs, scrabbling past the junk mail until I found the little white plastic net.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Paddy said, standing half hidden behind the living-room door.

  ‘Babybel!’ I said, shaking it in his face. ‘And orange peel. I thought it was kids. I was even kind of tickled, to think this was such a nice place to stay that the kids put their crap in a bin instead of dropping it in the verge. But it was you, wasn’t it? You gave yourself a migraine so ‒ so that you’d … What?’

  Paddy was staring at me with the two yellow lines down his cheeks that he gets when his blood sugar drops. ‘So that I wouldn’t have to go and pretend to check up on them,’ he said. ‘I bottled out. I couldn’t face it. Yes, I gave myself a migraine. Then, by the time Julie found the email saying they’d gone off on holiday, it was too late. I even went and stuck my fingers down my throat. Have you ever puked up soft cheese and Twixes? Well, don’t bother.’

  ‘But then you went back anyway,’ I said. ‘Two days later. When it was going to be even worse.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paddy said. His colour was coming back again. And it shouldn’t have been. If he was thinking about what he’d seen in that kitchen, he should be going yellow all over and heaving.

  ‘They were already gone, weren’t they?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you saw the note. On the corkboard.’

  He closed his eyes and said nothing.

  ‘What’s going on, Paddy?’ I asked him.

  His eyes flew open again. ‘I don’t know. I honestly do not know.’

  And I smiled, as if I believed him. I didn’t remind him that two minutes ago he’d looked me right in the eye and told me he’d ‘never hide anything from’ me when he was hiding three things right that minute.

  I didn’t say a word. I managed to keep smiling as long as he was looking at me. But something changed that day. It was like I stepped off the seesaw of our marriage. I left him on the other end and I didn’t care whether he was in the air or grounded. The next day when I sat in Waugh’s office getting scolded like a schoolgirl, trying to get my head round what the hell was happening in our wonderful new life in this sweet little town, I was working alone.

  Chapter 22

  ‘Was that the police going into Robert’s office?’ Sonsie had turned the sign to ‘Closed’ at the charity shop and was right behind me, actually nudging my back with the soft woolly domes of her gravity-defying bosom. I took a step away but she followed me, bumping up against me like a little waterbuffalo. Some really truly round women have no clue where their bodies end, as if they’re only responsible for the core area and there’s disputed territory at the edges where it’s up to you to maintain the border.

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  I’d heard people say their heads were fizzing before that day. Clients at a low ebb, neighbours at my mum’s bit, loads of my dad’s relations when things got out of hand with partners, ex-partners, officials, kids, pals, texts, calls and the telly blaring. But until that moment, standing in the dark hall of the church, halfway between the shop and Waugh’s office, I had never felt it for myself.

  ‘Lovatt and Tuft Dudgeon are dead,’ I said. ‘I need to sit down, Sonsie. I need to go and sit in the quiet awhile.’

  I blundered through the doors at the back of the aisle and slipped into one of the elders’ seats in the last pew. But, of course, she followed me.

  ‘Was it a plane crash? I never heard on the news. Or was it a hold-up? South America, you know what they say.’

  ‘They never got to South America,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they were ever going to South America. They just said that so no o
ne would look for them for a while.’

  ‘Suicide?’ Sonsie breathed. Perched on the edge of a seat, she had no lap at all. Her stomach bulged forward all the way – it wasn’t far – to her knees, but that didn’t stop her grabbing one of my hands in both of hers and holding it in that nonexistent lap, pressed against her belly, with the underside of her bosom brushing my knuckles.

  ‘Suicide,’ I said, lying in a church. ‘At least, there was a note. Lovatt left a note and his will. But there’s no sign of the bodies. So the police are searching.’

  ‘Searching the church?’ The organ was right above us and it chimed in tune with her sudden shriek.

  ‘No, no, I don’t think so. They’re talking to Robert because Tuft worked here. Volunteered here anyway. They’ll probably want to talk to you too. They might even want to talk to me. Because of Paddy. Even though I never met them.’

  Was I really going to lie to the cops?

  ‘But they can’t be dead,’ Sonsie said. ‘They would never kill themselves. They didn’t believe in it. Tuft volunteered at the Samaritans. Saturday nights, no less – a right rough lot you get when the pubs close. And she didn’t believe in suicide, or capital punishment. Not even war. We had some falling-outs when it was Kosovo. Well, discussions, I suppose you’d say.’

  I found myself squeezing Sonsie’s hand.

  ‘She wasn’t depressed either,’ Sonsie said. ‘She was looking forward to meeting you. She said on Monday she was going to stop in at the gate lodge on the way home and try to get you up to Widdershins for dinner.’

  ‘Did she?’ I said. ‘Did she really?’ I hoped Sonsie didn’t notice my hand turning slick as she held it. She did notice. She let it go and wiped hers on the bulge of her tweedy thigh. But she didn’t register. She was still lost in denial of Tuft’s suicide.

  ‘They were good neighbours,’ I said. ‘Planning to have us round, playing mah jongg with the Sloans. Strange how Mr Sloan never said that, though. He told me on Monday his wife had a tummy bug.’

  Sonsie searched my face, hers drawn up with anxiety. ‘Tummy bug?’ she said. ‘So, could it be natural causes? Have they both taken ill and slipped away? They’re not as young as they were and there’s not a picking on either of them.’