Murder to Music

by Lesley Cookman

  ‘Perhaps they want to find traces of that,’ suggested Libby.

  ‘I don’t know why they would,’ said Campbell. ‘That was destroyed by fire.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know then,’ said Libby. ‘Anyway, it’s nothing to do with me any longer.’

  ‘Thrown off the case, eh?’ Campbell grinned and stood up, brushing himself down. ‘Let me know if anything breaks.’

  ‘May I tell Fran what you’ve told me? About the hospital?’ Libby looked up at him, shading her eyes.

  ‘Of course. It’s public knowledge.’

  Not that public, thought Libby, as she packed her book and thermos into her basket. We didn’t find out about it that easily. She stood up, thinking about the poor little two-year-old who’d been sent into a sanatorium. If Jane knew about that sort of thing, no wonder she didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘Sophie said you were here.’ Fran was leaning on the railings on top of the sea wall. Libby climbed the three steps to join her.

  ‘I felt like a day on the beach. Only I’ve had enough. Campbell was just here.’

  ‘Sophie told me. What did he want?’

  ‘He didn’t come to Nethergate just to see us. He was here doing some report on sewage outfall.’ Libby pulled a face.

  Fran nodded. ‘Just round into the other bay. It’s not that bad here, actually.’

  ‘Sounds awful,’ said Libby. ‘Would you like some of my thermos tea? I haven’t drunk it.’

  ‘Come on. I’ll make you a proper cup. I could do with one.’

  ‘That sounds ominous. How was Chrissie?’ Libby followed Fran across the road to her front door.

  ‘Dire.’ Fran opened the door. ‘How I ever spawned that child I shall never know. Thank goodness she doesn’t live any nearer.’

  ‘You haven’t heard anything from Jane I suppose?’ Libby put down her basket and followed Fran into the kitchen.

  ‘No, but I doubt we’d be the first people she’d tell when something happens.’ Fran switched on the kettle and opened the back door for Balzac, who strolled in, dark furry tail waving like a plume of feathers behind him.

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Libby, ‘and we don’t want to become those infuriating people who keep ringing up and asking if they’re still there.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ said Fran. ‘In fact I want to become one of those people with as low a profile as possible.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Was Chrissie worse than usual?’

  ‘Do you know what she had the cheek to say?’ Fran turned to Libby, brimming with indignation.

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘She thought I ought to move in with her and Bruce a month before the baby’s due and stay for a couple of months afterwards.’

  ‘No!’ Libby couldn’t help giggling. ‘And what did Guy have to say to that?’

  ‘I just asked her quite calmly if she and Bruce were going to move out of the master bedroom for us.’

  ‘I bet she loved that.’

  ‘She was a touch taken aback. Bruce wasn’t there, of course, and he wouldn’t have it anyway. He’s only just got over the shock of becoming a prospective father.’

  Libby shook her head. ‘I just hope it doesn’t split them up. She’d be bound to descend on you like she did last time.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Fran grimly, pouring water into mugs. ‘She won’t get the chance.’

  They carried their mugs through to the sitting room and sat down either side of the huge inglenook fireplace. Balzac promptly jumped on Libby’s knee and nearly sent her tea flying.

  ‘So what did Campbell have to say?’ asked Fran. ‘You still haven’t told me.’

  Libby told her everything Campbell had said. ‘So now perhaps we ought to look it up backwards, if you know what I mean,’ she finished. ‘Although I really don’t know why all this history didn’t come up before when we were researching it.’

  ‘What we still don’t know,’ said Fran, staring thoughtfully into the empty fireplace, ‘is who owned it in the fifties.’

  ‘No.’ Libby frowned. ‘And that’s the most puzzling bit of all. We know it was a merchant’s house, then a workhouse, then a TB sanatorium, but we don’t know what happened after that, and who was excavating. Who dug up the body? And Campbell said it was someone who worked there who put around the story of the ghost.’

  ‘But far more puzzling,’ said Fran, ‘is who is clearing the grave and laying flowers now?’

  ‘Well, I said to Campbell, it surely wouldn’t be a relative of the person who’s buried there. It would be too long ago.’

  ‘Fifties? A child? We’re talking between forty and fifty years ago. It could easily be a relative. A younger sibling. An older one, even. It could even be a parent.’

  ‘I suppose so, but not a parent. They’d be too old to clear the grave.’

  ‘It still doesn’t seem right to me.’ Fran put her mug down on the hearth. ‘Why, if there are graves from that long ago, is someone trying to scare us off?’

  ‘Not just us,’ said Libby, ‘everybody. That music plays for the police, too.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘ANDREW’S GONE THROUGH THE records he can find and apparently Ian’s demanded Land Registry information,’ said Fran on the phone the following morning.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I don’t know. Andrew thinks he’s got something, but he isn’t sure what.’

  ‘Can anybody look up previous ownership of houses?’ Libby was tapping various combinations of words into her search engine.

  ‘I think you have to pay,’ said Fran. ‘Anyway, Andrew said he’d phone later. He was going to see Rosie.’

  ‘You’re right. It does look as though you have to pay. Did you know that the Canterbury Land Registry office is in Nottingham?’

  ‘How ridiculous. Well, I hope Ian has some joy with it. Although if he thinks that it’s an old body I can’t see why he’s bothering.’

  Libby sat for a while in front of the laptop, wondering how she could find out any more about White Lodge. As it was Saturday, she could reasonably expect no results from either Andrew or Ian until Monday and it irked her to sit and do nothing, even if there was nothing she was expected to do.

  “Gone cold” was the term she had used to Ben the previous evening when telling him about the developments. He had been careful not to show how pleased he was about this, but she’d known, and been depressed.

  This morning, however, he’d gone off with his cousins Peter and James to make a rare visit to his son who lived somewhere in the north. Ben’s relationship with his children had been soured by the break-up of his marriage, and he rarely had the opportunity to see either of them, so despite the fact that it would mean a weekend on her own, Libby was pleased for him.

  And, she reminded herself, it meant she could do exactly what she wanted until Sunday night. Harry had suggested she joined him at The Pink Geranium for Sunday lunch, but, other than that, she was free. So free, in fact, that she immediately decided to go and have another look at White Lodge. But first, she looked it up on the satellite mapping site to see if there was any other way in.

  It was confusing, however. She could see the open road by which she and Fran had approached it, but the grounds around it looked heavily wooded and seemed to have no definitive boundary. There did appear to be a lane which led towards the back of the property, but it petered out as far as she could see. Still, she thought, it was worth a try.

  The easiest way to approach the other side of the property was to go via Steeple Mount, a village which hadn’t always had happy connotations for Libby, but she drove through happily enough, noting as she did so that the baker’s shop had gone, and gave a quick glance upwards to the standing stone Grey Betty, keeping watch over the town. The road dipped down to become a cut between high, heavily treed banks, similar to many others in this part of Kent, although Libby knew that either side of the lane the fields spread out with hardly a tree in sight.

  Then, she came to a crossroads. A few
houses and a pub were gathered round it, and to her right what looked like a small estate of new houses. Hesitating, she looked round for clues. Nothing. As there was no one to be seen, she couldn’t ask directions, but then she didn’t know where she was aiming for herself. With a shrug, she put the car into gear and went straight on.

  The lane began to climb a slight slope. On Libby’s right were a few more cottages, on her left a terrace of them and what looked like a coach-house, with a carriage entrance. Then, on a rise to her left surrounded by even more trees, a church. She frowned. This was odd. She had assumed White Lodge was quite isolated, but creeping up behind it was all this civilization. Although to be fair, she told herself, she didn’t know exactly how far away from White Lodge she was. And sure enough, as shown on her computer, the lane, by now thick with last year’s fallen leaves and almost completely shaded from the sun by huge trees, petered out. Yards ahead of her an old gate hung half open on its hinges, and to her left, a bank of rubble and tree roots, behind which the forbidding grey face of a large, stone building.

  Libby got out of the car. It looked as though where she had parked had once been some kind of drive or entrance, but now access to the building had effectively been silted up. Nevertheless, she climbed over the worst of the roots and scrambled to the top of the bank, where she peered past huge tree trunks to the building itself.

  At this end there were no windows, but further along there were a few. Many were cracked or simply missing, and she could see nothing of what was inside except the flutter of a piece of rag at one of the upper casements. There was little clue as to what age the building was, other than iron building ties high up on the blank wall.

  She contemplated climbing down the other side of the bank but the area between it and the building was so overgrown with brambles it was even worse than the gardens of White Lodge. She looked up at the grey wall in front of her. White Lodge. Was this in the grounds of White Lodge?

  She climbed back down the bank, went round the car and to the end of the lane where the gate hung open. Peering to the left, she could see nothing but a line of trees, and, in front of her, a wide, open field, full of something golden and waving. Wheat, she supposed. Well, logically, it could be the back boundary of the grounds of White Lodge, and, she thought suddenly, this could in fact be one of the old workhouse buildings. She went back to it and shivered. Above the trees the sun was still shining, but here all was cool and ominously still.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Libby almost screamed. When she turned round, so quickly she almost fell, she found herself being regarded politely by a dark-skinned man with a moustache and a very sharp suit.

  ‘Oh, goodness!’ she said. ‘You startled me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The man stepped forward a little. ‘I wondered if you were lost?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Libby, feeling uncomfortable and wondering how much she should say. ‘I was hoping to find – um – a back way to Cherry Ashton.’

  ‘Ah.’ The man smiled. ‘This is Cherry Ashton.’ He waved a hand behind him. ‘Not very big, you see. Were you looking for someone in particular?’

  Someone, he said, not something.

  ‘Well, I was, actually.’ Libby gave what she hoped was a disarming smile as her brain raced. ‘The Cherry Ashton workhouse.’

  He raised his brows. ‘Really? But that has been gone since the beginning of the last century.’

  Bum. Think again. ‘Yes, I know, but I was hoping to find some remnants of it. You see,’ she went on, gathering confidence, ‘the main house is still standing, and it was turned into a sanatorium after the workhouse was demolished. I thought there must have been at least one other building in use as the sanatorium.’ She gestured behind her. ‘So I wondered if this was it?’

  ‘Yes, we all know about the sanatorium.’ He looked serious. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t know if that building was ever used. Here in the village we all assume it is just a derelict building.’

  ‘And you don’t know if it forms part of the White Lodge estate?’ Might as well go the whole hog, now.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ He nodded towards the solid looking undergrowth. ‘As you can see, no one would be prepared to try and get near it.’

  Libby clambered down to stand closer to him. ‘Doesn’t anyone know anything about it? In my village there’s always someone who knows. Always a gossipy old lady who was born there.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. There are people who remember the sanatorium. The Princess Beatrice.’

  ‘But not this building.’ Libby sighed. ‘Oh, well. I expect we’ll find out on the estate plans.’

  ‘We?’ The man raised an interrogative eyebrow. Libby cursed herself.

  ‘For the sale,’ she improvised hurriedly. ‘White Lodge is being sold.’

  ‘Ah, of course. Although who would want to buy it with that history?’

  ‘What history? As a workhouse? Or a sanatorium? I understand several people died there. Children.’

  He nodded. ‘Many. There are those who say it is haunted.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Libby, ‘but that’s only a rumour. Nobody believes it really.’

  ‘Really.’ The man frowned. ‘I thought many local people believed it.’

  ‘You’re obviously local. Do you believe it?’

  The man smiled. ‘Yes, I’m local. I live in Ashton Terrace, there.’ He indicated the row of cottages. ‘And I don’t know if I believe it or not. I have long accepted it as fact.’

  ‘Have you lived here long?’ Libby asked before she could think better of it.

  He laughed. ‘Longer than you would think. I have restaurants. In Canterbury and Nethergate. My sons run them now.’

  ‘Oh, goodness. The Golden Spice?’

  ‘Yes. You know them?’

  ‘My friends and I go to the Nethergate one regularly.’ Libby held out her hand. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Aakarsh Vindari.’ He bowed over her hand.

  ‘I’m Libby Sarjeant, Mr Vindari. And thank you for your help.’

  Vindari shrugged. ‘I think you knew everything I could tell you.’

  ‘Well, it was nice to have it confirmed.’ Libby smiled. ‘And although I know of it, I’ve never been to Cherry Ashton before. I didn’t know it was so small.’

  ‘That is how we like it. Of course, just down the road we have the caravan park, but that keeps other people away.’

  ‘Caravan Park?’

  ‘They call it “The Roses”.’ There was an unmistakeable sneer in Vindari’s voice.

  ‘Oh, that! That’s near here?’

  ‘If you had turned right at the crossroads instead of coming straight on, you would have seen it.’

  So, thought Libby, he knew which direction I came from. But then, it’s so quiet here they probably all looked out of their windows when they saw an unfamiliar car.

  ‘Well, perhaps I’m glad I didn’t, then,’ she said aloud. ‘And now I’d better be going. Thank you again, Mr Vindari.’

  ‘A pleasure, Mrs Sarjeant,’ he said, bowing again. ‘And please, next time you visit of my restaurants, mention my name.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Libby, resolving to go as soon as she possibly could.

  He watched as she climbed into the car, turned it round and drove carefully back down the lane. When she got to the crossroads she wanted to turn left and go and have a look at “The Roses”, a holiday park much maligned in the area, but which she had never seen. With Aakarsh Vindari watching from the top of the lane, she didn’t dare. However, she did turn right, wondering if this road might bring her out on the main Creekmarsh road.

  And that was odd, she thought. The map had indicated that the lane she followed and the Creekmarsh road both led to Cherry Ashton, but the Creekmarsh road didn’t. Unless there was yet another spur not marked on the map. However, when she finally emerged from the tunnel-like lane she found herself at a T-junction with the Creekmarsh road, and opposite her a small, old black-and-white sign pointing back the
way she had come to Cherry Ashton. She must have missed it both times she had been here with Fran.

  On impulse, she turned right and drove up to White Lodge, surprised to find police tape still across the gateway, although with no noticeable police presence. She parked the car on the verge opposite and crossed the road. Without going in through the gate and crossing the police tape, she walked along the boundary hedge until she came to the end. The high wall that surrounded the garden led away across an open field. Cautiously, Libby, with a glance over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t observed, began to follow it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AFTER A FEW HUNDRED yards, the wall turned slightly to the left and appeared to lead straight into a copse. Libby stopped. Could it be the woodland that surrounded the building at Cherry Ashton? She continued towards it, until she realised that around the edges was a barbed wire fence. Stepping slightly away from the wall into the field, she tried to peer past the wooded area to see if she could see the village, but she could see nothing except a slight rise topped by more trees.

  Disappointed, she turned back the way she’d come. It certainly looked a possibility that the derelict building was part of the White Lodge estate, although what significance that had she had no idea. Except that maybe, somehow, it was connected to the music? Hidden away? But if so, she chided herself, it would need very sophisticated wiring in order to play music through speakers in the main house. And no one could be seen approaching from there, either.

  She reached the edge of the wall and found Ian Connell leaning against it.

  ‘Exploring?’ he said.

  Libby felt heat rising into her face once more. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why, exactly?’

  ‘Am I trespassing?’

  ‘Don’t avoid the question, Libby.’

  ‘I was just interested. I wondered how far the estate stretched.’

  ‘Quite a way, according to the plans we’ve found.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Libby eagerly. ‘You’ve found plans?’