‘What a reprehensible thought,’ said Thomas. ‘Thoroughly endorsed, on my part. Now, will you take coffee up to Diana, or shall I?’
Mrs Belton was on the phone to Ursula for some time, but Ellie refused to fret about her phone bill. This was an emergency, and in an emergency you broke all the usual rules about not spending time on phone calls to mobiles – especially when the mobile was still in her name.
Midge the cat came down from the top of one of the bookcases, but was restless, declined to sit on Ellie’s lap. He disliked Diana, could smell that she was in the house, and refused to settle. Ellie and Thomas turned on the television, but couldn’t concentrate, either.
Eventually Mrs Belton came in, looking worn out. No wonder, thought Ellie; the woman spent last night in hospital. She needs painkillers and an early night.
‘Thank you for the use of your phone. My daughter and I had a good chat. She wants me to go and stay with a friend for a while. She thinks it will do me good to get away and my friend’s delighted to have me. I’ll phone the office tomorrow and tell them what’s happened.’
‘An excellent idea,’ said Ellie.
‘As for the mess at the flat –’ Mrs Belton shrugged – ‘my insurance policy is New for Old, and I’m looking forward to replacing everything with new furniture. I could do with some new clothes, too, and I can get them in the sales. As for my laptop, I can now get a brand new one. As Ursula says, it’s an ill wind.’
‘Indeed it is,’ said Ellie, thinking that Ursula knew exactly how to present the situation to her mother. Good for Ursula.
‘There are one or two things I shall miss. My Bristol glass, for instance. And Ursula’s art. But she says there are lots of antique shops where I’m going, and I can have all the fun of hunting for something nice there.’
‘Excellent idea,’ Thomas agreed.
‘The only thing is,’ said Mrs Belton, ‘Ursula would like to talk to you, Mrs Quicke. She says she has something to tell you. She wants us to meet up at Waterloo Station tomorrow morning for a coffee. I must say I can’t see the point of it, but she insists on coming up to meet me.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Ellie. ‘She’s making sure you are properly looked after all the way. I’ll take you to Waterloo by minicab, and we can all have a coffee together before you go wherever it is you’re going. It’s best if you don’t tell me where that is, right?’
‘That’s what Ursula said too. I’ll leave you the keys to the flat so that you can let the insurance people in, if you will. I’ll ring Ursula every night from my friend’s house, so you can always get a message to me if anything comes up, but you don’t need to take me to the station. I’ll take the bus and the tube.’
‘We won’t hear of it. Much too tiring for you. Besides, I’d like a word with Ursula myself.’
The phone rang at Thomas’s side. He listened to the excited voice at the other end, laughed, and passed the receiver over to Ellie. As she identified her caller, Thomas urged Mrs Belton out of the room, saying he’d get a hot drink for her to go to bed on.
It was Armand. ‘Hey, there! We’ve just had a visit from some dude who thinks he’s James Bond and guess what, his nose bleeds just like everyone else’s.’
‘Calm down, Armand. Was it Anthony Prior?’
‘Dunno his name. Tall, well-set-up guy in a good suit. Good-looking in a macho sort of way, but if he were a boy in my class at school, I’d suspect him of bullying. Used to getting his own way. Very pressing to know your whereabouts. I’d got my friend the rugby player here for supper and he’d brought a six pack and well, you know how it is, I don’t usually, but when the cat’s away—’
‘Kate and the children are safe?’
‘She rang me this evening. She’s fine. The babe’s teething and she’s worried about me, but she needn’t have been, eh?’
‘Your visitor knew we were friends?’
‘He wanted your address and I shook my head, all sorrowful, and said yes, we used to be really good friends, but you’d gone all upmarket when you moved away and didn’t want to know us now. He saw the kids’ toys and said maybe my wife knew where you were, and I said we’d had a bit of a disagreement and she’d gone back to her mother’s in Liverpool for a bit. I said I didn’t really care if she came back or not.’ He belched. ‘Do you think I’ll get detention for telling lies?’
Ellie tried to sound censorious. ‘Armand, I never asked you to lie for me.’
‘It was fun, though. It nearly worked too. Only my stupid mate had to give the game away by laughing. That’s when my laddo tried to barge past me into the house, to see for himself who might be lurking within, so I popped one over his guard and caught him on the nose. Splat! Amazing how much blood can spray out of one nose. Some got on the wallpaper. Kate’ll have my hide for that. Anyway, he limped off. Well, I might have planted a kick on his backside as he withdrew. He’s driving a Jag, by the way. Want the number? I wrote it down on the wallpaper just inside the hall. Oops, Kate’ll have me for that too.’ He reeled off a number and Ellie wrote it down.
‘Armand, you’re a treasure beyond compare!’
‘X-factor, that’s me. Ta-ra, now. Got one more beer to drink before we doss down for the night.’
Thomas returned in time to find Ellie still laughing. She told him what had happened, and he smiled too. ‘Better take a black cab tomorrow, rather than use your usual minicabs. Harder to trace.’
On that solemn note, they made sure the house was locked up tight, and went up to bed.
‘Ant? You sound funny. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Oh, one thing after another. The Quicke neighbours were a washout. I had to wait till they came home from school. They’re teachers. One was just a little squirt, but the other was the size of a barn. Drinking beer and eating sausages. The little one said they’d lost contact with Mrs Quicke when she moved away and hadn’t bothered to leave them her address, but I didn’t believe him. I could have taken him, but not the two of them together. I’ll try that one last address tomorrow.’
‘Why not tonight?’
‘I’m . . . feeling a little tired.’
Friday morning
Waterloo Station. Hustle and bustle and anxiety. Which platform? Where’s the Underground? Where did she say we’d meet up? Under the clock?
‘Here I am,’ said Ursula, materializing at their elbows. Something had happened to Ursula. She was wearing a knitted black beret over her hair, a black jacket and jeans. There were dark lines at forty-five degrees under her eyes; she looked as if she hadn’t slept much, and yet she was more stylish than ever. She’d lost all pretensions to being pretty, but she was now a very striking young woman. Perhaps ‘handsome’ was the right word.
She kissed her mother’s cheek, took Mrs Belton’s suitcase from Ellie, and whisked them to a quietish coffee bar above the concourse.
‘Time for elevenses,’ she said. ‘I’m paying.’
‘No, you’re not,’ said Ellie, taking out her purse, ‘and I’m buying your mother’s train ticket as well.’
‘You’ve done more than enough,’ said Ursula, but Mrs Belton accepted the notes thrust upon her, with a nod of thanks.
‘The thing is,’ said Ursula, over croissants and cappuccinos, ‘that you can get into situations without realizing exactly what’s really going on, and then it’s too late to back out.’ She put a hand on her mother’s arm. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s mine. What happened to Mia is partly down to me.’
Mrs Belton wasn’t having this. ‘Oh, come now, Ursula—’
‘Yes, it is. You don’t know the half of it. Let me try to explain what happened. It started in the school holidays. I was going out with Dan and he knew the Priors because the younger brother – Timothy, the one they call Dumbo because of his big ears – was friends with him from the early days. Dan and I didn’t have much money, but the Priors invited us into their set and naturally we were flattered. We paid our way, sort of. Dan coached them for free on the ten
nis courts, and I’m a good listener.
‘Also, I hit it off with Mia, who was on the fringe of their circle, so to speak. Mr Prior had adopted her when he married Mia’s mother, but she didn’t fit in. She didn’t even look like the rest of the family, being so dark while they’re all so fair. And having been brought up without much money, she wasn’t used to their wild ways.’
‘What wild ways?’ said Mrs Belton. ‘You never mentioned—’
‘I knew you wouldn’t approve. They would get paralytic and spew up, have casual sex with the girls who hung around with them. There were plenty of young girls who would do anything to be noticed by the Priors. They drove fast cars rather dangerously, they threw litter around, and bad-mouthed anyone who remonstrated.’
She swallowed, braced herself. ‘At Christmas time it became a point of honour for each of us to steal something from the shops to give as presents. We pooled the lot, gave a prize to whoever stole the most valuable item. I won twice.’
Mrs Belton looked shattered. ‘How could you!’
‘And they used drugs,’ said Ellie, making it a statement.
Ursula gave her a straight look. ‘Yes, some of them did. I didn’t, nor did Dan or Mia. Lloyd didn’t either.’
‘How did they get the drugs?’
‘Through one of the boys, nicknamed Bullseye.’ Ursula shivered. ‘I never liked him. He got the nickname because he said he always scored when he wanted a girl. I wondered for ages how he managed it, because I thought he was repulsive.’
‘He used the date rape drug, Rohypnol?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ursula, a little wildly. ‘Tim warned Mia and me never to touch a drink that he’d handled but, as to proof, I don’t know. None of us four were into sex. I didn’t because my periods have always been all over the place, I couldn’t settle on the Pill, and I daren’t risk it. Mia didn’t because she hadn’t found anyone who turned her on that way yet. Lloyd didn’t, from principle. Dan was unsure of himself. If I’d encouraged him . . . but I didn’t. So he didn’t.
‘We thought ourselves a cut above the others because we didn’t indulge in casual sex and drink ourselves silly every weekend. Stupid, stupid! It never occurred to me that I might be targeted as a pair of legs, because I was with Dan, and Dan was Timothy’s friend. Naturally, I thought the gang would respect that, and that they’d respect Mia because she was a Prior. I didn’t see the price tag until too late.’
Mrs Belton allowed a frown to crease her forehead. ‘My mother always said nice girls sing for their supper. Wasn’t that enough?’
‘Not in their circle, but I didn’t realize it for ages. At first the price tag wasn’t too high. They wanted Dan to wangle them some tickets for the tennis club dance for free. He was doing some coaching for the club, so it was easy for him to pinch some. It was ridiculous, because of course they could have afforded to pay, but it amused them to get something for nothing. I wasn’t too happy when I heard about it, but Dan said the Priors had promised him a job at the new Health Centre when it opened, so it was all in the family, like. He was dead keen on getting that job, and doing them a favour here or there seemed, well, not a problem.
‘Anthony was the leader of the group. Last year he started to pay me more attention, flattering me, asking me to help outsiders feel at ease at their parties. The first time it was some decrepit old man whose wife had recently died. He had goggly eyes and all the while I was dancing with him, I was making fun of him behind his back. That was not very nice of me, particularly since he was pathetically grateful for my company. I didn’t realize what I was doing, then.
‘The next time they had a party at their house, Anthony asked me to pretty up to a stupid-looking rich boy straight from school: all sweaty hands, obviously way out of his depth. I was sorry for the poor creature, and spent most of the evening with him. He was nice.’ Tears stood out on her cheeks. ‘Only, later on I heard they’d got him into a poker game after I left, and taken thousands off him. They laughed, said he could afford it and that I’d done a good job, but I began to feel . . . dirty. Used. I told Dan I wasn’t going to play that game any more. I said I wasn’t one of their groupies, jumping through hoops for money. Dan was worried, said we had to be careful not to get on the wrong side of the Priors. That was when I decided to accept my father’s invitation to go to New York in the new year.
‘Dan said I’d have to put in an appearance at the Grand Opening, even if it was only for a few hours before I flew out, and of course I agreed. He gave me a wonderful designer dress for Christmas. It was a bit short, but I wore it to please him. Only, when we got there, Anthony said he wanted me to “look after” one of the guests, some rich Middle Eastern princeling. He said that was my job for the night. He complimented me on the dress, which he said he’d told Dan to put on his account at the shop. I felt like tearing it off there and then, but of course I didn’t. I told Dan how I felt, and he said it didn’t matter if I cosied up to this chap because I was due to fly out in the early hours of the next morning.
‘So I did as Anthony asked and flirted with the man, only to discover he thought I was his for the night. Not just the evening. I was furious. I ran off to find Anthony and told him I didn’t play those sort of games, and anyway, didn’t he know I was going to America that night? He was livid, because he hadn’t known. He said I owed him. Even the dress I had on . . .!
‘I fled to the ladies and found Mia there, in tears. She said Anthony had fixed her up for the night with one of the councillors, and he’d had his paws all over her, and she couldn’t bear it. Anthony had said she should pull her weight for once, that the Priors needed some contract or other from the council, and her “friend” was going to fix it for them if Mia were nice to him.
‘I couldn’t think what to do. I mean, I was getting out of there, resolving never to have anything to do with the Priors ever again, but Mia . . . she suggested coming to see me off at Heathrow just to get away from the party, and I agreed. We stayed in the ladies till it was time for me to go. Only, when we came out, Anthony was waiting for us. And Dan. To do him justice, Dan put his arm around me, told Anthony that I was off limits and that he was taking me out to Heathrow that minute. Anthony didn’t like it. He glowered at me. Said he’d catch up with me on my return.
‘He got Mia to stay by saying the councillor had already gone home, very annoyed that she’d disappointed him. He said some of the gang were moving upstairs for a private party, and he’d see she got home safely afterwards. She looked at me, hoping I’d ask her to come away with us, but Dan whispered in my ear that it was our last evening together, and I refused to take the hint. If only I’d known!’
‘How dare Anthony!’ Mrs Belton was indignant.
‘Easily,’ said Ursula. ‘He’d paid for me, you see. In advance. With patronage, with parties and lifts in fast cars, and with a stunning dress. Only, I hadn’t read the price tag.’
Ellie nodded. ‘Corruption. Little by little. But you got away.’
‘Oh yes, I got away and did a lot of thinking. I realized how nearly I’d become one of the good-time party girls that I despised. I worried that Dan was allowing it to happen. He came to the airport to meet me on my return, and that’s when he told me about Lloyd’s accidental death. I couldn’t believe my ears. The way Dan told it to me – he hadn’t been there when it happened, of course – but he seemed uneasy about it himself, saying he was sure there was nothing wrong really. He, well, he protested too much. At one point he blurted out that Timothy had been involved in some way, but then retracted what he’d said. You remember Dan and Timothy had been friends for ever?
‘I asked Dan what Mia had said about it, because she and Lloyd had been good friends; not lovers, but friends. I told him I’d been trying to reach Mia for days but she wouldn’t answer her phone, and that’s when Dan said that Mia had been disowned by her family because she’d been sleeping around. There was no way I could go along with that. Mia wasn’t like that, she wasn’t! I was so upset, I let
fly at him, and he . . . he said I was being stupid and ungrateful, and couldn’t see which side my bread was buttered.’
She swiped her hands across her cheeks to get rid of her tears. ‘We quarrelled, and I saw what I’d known for ever, but never acknowledged before: that Dan was not as strong as me, and that I couldn’t rely on him when the chips were down. That was such a terrible moment, I couldn’t think what to do or say. My future had been all laid out for me for years and if I broke with Dan I knew I’d be so lonely, so alone. Dan seemed to think I’d given in, that I’d “seen sense and would behave myself” in future. In other words, go along with Anthony’s little plans. I didn’t disabuse him.
‘The next day I caught up with Anthony at the club, surrounded by some of his pals. I challenged him about Mia. He repeated the slander. I told him he was a liar, and that he could count me out in future. He got his mates to hold me while he assaulted me, pulled up my skirts and . . . no, mother, he didn’t rape me. Worse, in a way. He tickled me till I was helpless, and then, when at least one of his pals was getting red in the face, he said, “Hold back, men, I’ve got other plans for her”. And he let me go.
‘I couldn’t confide in you, Mother, because you were really poorly, and I didn’t want to worry you when there was nothing you could do about the situation. I rang Mia’s home, and got nowhere. I went to the police, ditto. I knew I couldn’t go through with the engagement to Dan, but I couldn’t face seeing him again. I’ve been so fond of him for so long, I thought I might break down and go back to him. That’s when I decided to spend a day in a church where I knew no one would look for me. I needed to get everything straight in my mind, and then go back to uni early. And that, Mrs Quicke, is how I came to meet you and ask for your help. I do apologize for dragging you into this mess, but if I hadn’t, Mother would have been left in a terrible state, so I’m thankful that I did.’
‘Yes,’ said Ellie, thinking through what the girl had said. ‘I’m glad too. So you think Anthony wants you back, in order to sleep with his client? And Mia? Do you have a theory about what happened to her, and why Lloyd died?’
Murder in House Page 20