by Eric Reed
“You’re rambling, Charlie,” his wife broke in. Turning toward Grace, she continued. “The point is, not long after Ronny and Mavis got married we found out Phyllis—our daughter—well, she had his bun in the oven. She was only fifteen at the time.”
“She said they used to carry on in the cemetery,” Charlie added in disgust.
“Then Veronica is your granddaughter?” Grace asked.
“Aye. But we’ve raised her to think we’re her mam and dad.”
“But surely her mother—”
“Phyllis had the bairn in her bedroom here, miss. A week later she stole the few coins I had in me purse, left Veronica behind and buggered off,” Joan cut in. “No idea where she’s gone and don’t want to know either.”
Grace wondered if Phyllis was the girl Mavis had mentioned.
“Aye,” Charlie said. “We’ve always done wor best for Veronica but now I can’t work like I could and things is tight, and that’s Ronny’s fault as well.”
His voice had begun to rise and Grace noticed his large hands had knotted into fists. “After Veronica was born, I went round and confronted the swine, asked him what he was going to do for her. He laughed in my face! Me, his bairn’s grandfather! And the next thing I knew he took me unawares and knocked me down! So there was a fair old fight but he didn’t fight fair. Got hold of me arm and deliberately broke it.”
He held up his right arm. It looked withered and the forearm was at an odd angle to the elbow.
Joan began to cry. “For God’s sake, Charlie, you’ll wake Veronica!”
“I see, Mr. Gibson—” Grace began.
“No, you don’t,” Charlie was now shouting. “Bloody doctor messed up, so me arm don’t work proper no more. No strength left in it, can’t straighten it. I had to leave the pit. Did you expect me to be another Tommy on the bridge, shivering in the wind and holding out me hand for charity? I got me pride. I want work. Now I have to spend me nights walking about telling fools to put their lights out and me days picking up odd jobs as best I can.”
A thoughtful Grace left soon afterward. It seemed there was quite a bit Mavis had not told her about Ronny, but was that surprising? They’d met only a few days before and what she had heard tonight was not the kind of thing a wife would talk about to a comparative stranger. But it certainly provided food for thought. Charlie did not appear to have realised his own words made him a suspect in the death of a man he so obviously hated.
From what seemed a great distance came the sound of singing. Christmas carols. The sound drifted in and out of her hearing as the cold breeze shifted, ebbed, and rose again. A church service? Carolers making the rounds?
When she dreamed of leaving Noddweir she never imagined spending her first Christmas Eve away from home questioning people about a murder. Then again, her childhood Christmas Eves were better forgotten. If her father chose to stay home and drink, or go to the pub and return drunk, it always ended the same way.
A chorus of “Deck the Halls” came ever so faintly to her ears. It made her think of the poor decorations in the home she had left. She could not tell from which direction the music came. Perhaps it was filtering down from Heaven.
***
Charlie Gibson stamped around the room in a fury. “You’ve got a mouth as big as Tynemouth, Joan! Why tell the police wor private business?”
“You said as much as me, Charlie. Everyone knows about Ronny and Veronica,” his wife shouted back. “Nobody knows where Phyllis is to check anything we say. So long as we stick to that, what can they do? She’s got your temper, Charlie, and plenty to be angry about with Ronny. He always had money but never gave us a penny for Veronica and what worries me is—”
A door opened and their sleepy granddaughter appeared in yellow pajamas, rubbing her eyes. “The noise woke me up, mam,” she complained. “Will you come and tell me a story if I go to bed nicely so I can be asleep when Santa comes?”
Chapter Twenty
When Grace returned to her lodgings she discovered two disassembled beds leaned against a wall in the kitchen. Mattresses and bedclothes were piled up in a corner with Grace’s suitcases perched on top.
Mavis stood on a chair pulling down paper chains and singing along with the gramophone. Dance music, not carols.
Grace frowned. “What’s that?”
“It’s Joe Loss and his band. You never heard “In the Mood”? Noddy wherever really must be Noddy nowhere.”
Grace said nothing. She thought the musical selection entirely inappropriate.
Mavis looked over her shoulder at Grace and flung the last handful of decorations on the floor. “He’s back, Grace. You just missed his arrival. They stuck him in the bedroom. Give us a hand to turn the mirror round, would you?”
Grace dragged a chair over to the mantelpiece and helped Mavis with the task. “When’s the funeral?”
“Boxing Day. The vicar’s been round already. He suggested taking the decorations down as this is, as he put it, a house of mourning,” Mavis chuckled. “Little does he know!”
“But the mirror…?”
“Nowt to do with him. It’s what you always do when there’s a death in the house. I’ve heard it’s to stop the deceased’s soul from getting trapped in it. Quite gives you the shivers, don’t it? Imagine me going to comb me hair and seeing Ronny looking at me out the mirror! You have to do what’s thought right, and what’s thought right is turning mirrors to the wall. Oh, and stopping the clock as well.”
She hopped down and looked around. “What about me tree? I’ll have to hide that. Damn the man—”
Grace looked askance at her but said nothing.
“Oh, well, he’ll be gone soon,” Mavis went on. “Good job I’ve got something black to wear. Where were you detecting tonight then?”
Grace indicated she had just come from the Gibsons, noting Mavis tightened her lips at her mention of the name.
However, Mavis merely remarked she intended to take Veronica’s gifts round to their house the following day. “Any news of Hans?”
“No sign. Nobody knows where he’s gone.”
“Whatever could have happened to him?”
Grace hesitated, then plunged into what she knew would be a sore topic. “It’s been suggested he was involved in Ronny’s death.”
As expected, Mavis flared up. “Bloody rubbish! I suppose I’m suspected of hiding Hans in me cupboard here? At least Ronny being in the bedroom makes sure Hans and me aren’t!”
“I don’t think Hans could be involved either, but I’m not in charge of the investigation.” Grace quickly changed the subject. “Charlie Gibson mentioned the fight he had with Ronny.”
“Aye, it was a nasty bit of bad luck for Charlie. I suppose he told you about Veronica?”
“Yes, he did. It’s kind of you to take an interest in the girl.”
“It is, isn’t it? She’s no blood relation to me. I felt sorry for her having a bastard like Ronny for a father. She’ll find out soon enough Charlie’s not her real father, if she hasn’t already.”
“I think the Gibsons are having trouble making ends meet with Charlie being out of regular work. He talked about a tommy begging on the bridge.”
Mavis laughed. “You’ve got it wrong, hinney. It’s not a tommy on the bridge, it’s Tommy on the bridge. He was a right character, was Tommy. Had the reputation of being the worse swearer on Tyneside and he had a lot of competition! Born almost blind in the old days and couldn’t work, so took to begging. He would stand on the boundary between Newcastle and Gateshead, halfway over the swing bridge. He was a cunning bugger. If he saw a Newcastle bluebottle coming to arrest him, he’d hop over to the Gateshead side and vice versa.”
Grace asked why policemen from both forces had not arranged to arrive at the same time.
“Well, they couldn’t cut him in half, could they? So he got away with
it. Half the city turned out for his funeral. A few will do the same for Ronny, if only to gawk and gossip.”
Grace was silent. Poor Tommy with one foot in one place and the other in another. It reminded her uncomfortably of her grandmother’s occasional references to heaven and hell and the world in between, the latter being a place where appearances were not always what they seemed.
“There’s a veil between us and them two unseen places,” her grandmother had said. “You can shake it a bit if you have the wisdom, the knowledge of what to do, but you better not shake it too hard. You never know what might come out from behind it.”
Grace recalled Rutherford’s disgust with his study group and its séances. The reclusive eccentric scholar and the irascible old wise woman would have enjoyed chatting. Or, at any rate, arguing.
Grace thought about the two bodies recently discovered. There was still no missing persons report to link to the anonymous woman. Could there be a connection between the deaths and the place they were found? In the case of the woman it was possible she had been plying her profession, but on the other hand Ronny was known to have been engaged in illegal activities before the war. Had one or both fallen afoul of an attacker hiding in the shadows? Was the arrangement of the limbs significant rather than mere accident? Was the display meant to frighten away a supernatural evil or merely to frighten another human being? An implied threat?
Grace was convinced Mavis could give her details about Ronny’s pre-war career and possibly information, providing a valuable starting place to begin investigating his death. But this wasn’t the time to question her.
Mavis poked her arm. “Wakey wakey! I’ve asked you twice to give me a hand with these mattresses. We’ll have to put them on the floor for now. What a Christmas this is turning out to be!”
Chapter Twenty-one
Mavis clicked off the wireless when the King’s speech ended. “God bless his majesty for telling us to be thankful we’ve been delivered from past dangers. Ironic, isn’t it? Pity Ronny couldn’t have waited a few days to be murdered instead of spoiling Christmas Day. Well, it’s the last one he’ll spoil.”
Grace couldn’t hide her dismay at Mavis’ callousness.
“Oh, go on, Grace.” Mavis gestured around the kitchen. “Look at it. Mirror turned to the wall, the clock stopped, and me poor little Christmas tree hidden in the coalhouse and all wor nice decorations taken down. Don’t want to scandalise the old wives, do we? They gossip enough as it is. Black doesn’t suit me either.”
Mavis wore a plain black dress, although it struck Grace as too short for mourning attire. “I don’t know how you can talk like that with Ronny still in the house.”
Mavis scowled in the direction of the bedroom. “Aye, back in the house and just what I wanted to find under my tree. Did you sleep well last night? I didn’t get a wink. That’s Ronny, still bloody interfering and causing trouble even after he’s dead. Never mind, we’ll have tea a bit early. And since we’ve no silly hats from crackers, I made some the other day specially for the festive season.”
She produced a pair of hats made of newspaper, perched one on her head at a jaunty angle, and went into the scullery to start the kettle boiling.
The cloying scent of lilies filled the air. Ronny’s closed coffin sat across a pair of trestles in the bedroom, surrounded by flowers. The house smelled more like Easter than Christmas.
Grace’s hat was shaped like a boat. It reminded her of Hans. Where had he gone? Had someone dragged him down a dark alley and beaten him so badly he was unable to get home? Or worse?
Would he be the next person found in the temple ruins?
Or had he experienced one of those episodes his roommate had talked about and got himself into trouble?
Surely he couldn’t have run off? He wasn’t a murderer.
Mavis returned. “Mind, tomorrow’s tea will be better. Mrs. Gibson promised to come in and help me get it ready while the funeral’s going on.”
“You’re not attending it?”
“Women don’t do that around here, Grace. Got to stay home and get something ready to eat after the funeral. I’ve already had extra food brought round by the neighbours. You’re eating a wee bit of it now.”
Grace took another bite of her fried luncheon meat and recalled the vicar’s comments concerning the kindness of his congregation. “Shouldn’t this be kept for tomorrow?”
“Don’t expect too many to visit. Most of Ronny’s marrers are in the forces and he never had that many to begin with. Or at least none that would dare show their faces in a decent household. Eat up. I know it’s not turkey and stuffing, but—”
She was interrupted by a brisk knocking on the front door. “Damn! Hide your hat!”
Grace recognised the caller as the man she had conversed with at the pub and mentally dubbed Mr. Gold Chain. When he spotted Grace he stopped in his tracks and looked at her in confusion and perhaps a hint of fear.
“Don’t worry,” Grace told him. “I’m not here in my official capacity. This is where I live.”
He took off his flat cap revealing sparse slicked-down grey hair. “Give me a start, you did. Bloke never wants to find a copper waiting for him.”
“Blokes like you don’t, Sefton.” Mavis all but carved his heart out with her glare. “Sandwich? No? Cup of tea then?”
“Nay, lass. Only called to pay me respects and to ask if there was owt I could do for you. Me and Ronny, we went back a long way.”
“Right nice of you.” Mavis’ voice was cold. “Nowt springs to mind.”
“Ronny and me had business interests. If he left anything undone…any loose ends…undelivered merchandise let’s say…?”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Sefton.”
“Aye, do that. Owt I can do, let me know.”
Mavis showed him to the bedroom and waited outside. Grace imagined him standing in front of the coffin, holding his cap. Thinking what?
After Sefton left, Mavis looked ready to spit. “Him and Ronny went back a long way, all right. Too bloody long!”
“What does he do?”
“Something he wouldn’t want you to know about. Ronny never told me much about their dealings. The gall of it, showing up today. Wanted a private talk in case I was in on any of Ronny’s schemes!”
The visit had soured the mood and Mavis made no attempt to bring out the newspaper hats again. She lapsed into an uncharacteristic silence.
Then there was another knock.
The two callers came into the kitchen in a frigid gust scented by lilies, a tiny old woman in black, face shadowed behind a veil, accompanied by a big-boned woman, younger, also dressed in black.
The elderly woman hobbled over to Mavis with the aid of a walking stick, and gave her a hug. “Oh, my poor dear. How awful for you. We’re terribly late, aren’t we? I forgot what street you are on. I said it was…” She paused and half turned toward her companion. “What did I tell you?”
“Chandler Street,” said the other woman.
“Thank you for your trouble,” Mavis told her. She took the elderly woman’s arm and led her out of the kitchen. “He’s in the bedroom.”
Mavis stared after the trio but resisted the urge to follow them. They stayed with Ronny’s coffin a long time, then emerged into the hallway and she heard the old woman again. “Such a good boy. What would I have done without him after me old man ran away? But then I always raised him to be a good boy and to be a good husband. Sometimes I worried, but he was a good husband, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. Very good.”
Then came the sound of the front door opening and closing, a brief gust of perfumed cold, and Mavis walked into the kitchen, eyes narrowed, lips tight.
Grace stared at her in astonishment.
“I know what you’re thinking, Grace! But what do you expect me to say? The poor woman isn’t old as she looks
. She started going soft in the head years ago. She’s Ronny’s mam.”
***
It took a cigarette to calm Mavis’ nerves. “Ronny came from a good family. Good, until his father ran off. Ironic, isn’t it? His mam’s being taken care of by relatives.”
“Will she be at the funeral?”
“No. Her niece, the woman who brought her, told me she wouldn’t be up to it. She said if Mrs. Arkwright ever asks about the funeral, she’ll tell her she was there. Kindest thing to do, really. The poor old dear won’t remember one way or another.”
Mavis asked Grace if she would like to accompany her to the Gibsons. “I’m going to take Nica her presents before we get any more visitors.”
“I don’t know, Mavis. I haven’t anything to give her, and I don’t like to go empty-handed,”
“Oh, aye. Let me think. Why don’t you give her the mittens or the pixie hood?”
“But you knitted those for her yourself. It wouldn’t feel right.”
“I know, you can give her my Spitfire brooch.”
Grace protested it was a gift from Hans, but Mavis waved her protests away. “I can get another one. Wrap it up and we’ll be off.”
Carter Street felt bleak and cheerless, a feeling exacerbated by the knowledge that it was Christmas, a time for joy.
Mrs. Gibson invited them to come in from the cold cheerily enough. Looking up past her, Grace could see Veronica peering round the corner of the landing. “Come to check to see if we have a black market turkey and brought your marrer with you as a witness, have you?” Mrs. Gibson asked Mavis with a smile.
“We’ll keep your secret if you’ll slip us enough for sandwiches,” Mavis replied.