He liked Alice. She was a gentle soul with a good word for everyone – even the more unpleasant residents of Fellside Court, of whom there were a few. But today he was worried about her. She seemed agitated, the incident with the pillbox at lunchtime a prime example.
‘Do you want me to escort you to your room, Madam?’ he asked with exaggerated gallantry, holding out an arm for her as she stood.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t be too long, Arty,’ said Edith Hird. ‘The next game starts soon. Goodnight, Alice.’
A chorus of ‘goodnight’ came from the rest of the group and Alice looked around, her gaze vague.
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘And God bless you.’
‘Goodbye?’ chuckled Arty as he led her to the lift. ‘You sound like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. “We’ll always have Fellside Court!”’
She smiled, but he could tell she wasn’t listening. When they got to her front door he kissed her gently on the cheek and wished her a good night’s sleep. As the door opened, he didn’t notice the rainbow-coloured pillbox on the coffee table. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But he might have been surprised if he’d seen Alice open it a couple of minutes later. And he would definitely have been perturbed if he’d seen her extract two tablets from the section marked ‘Wednesday’ and take them with a swallow of water, admonishing herself for her forgetfulness as she did so.
4
On Thursday morning, like every other day of the week, at a time when most folk in Bruncliffe were rolling over to silence the alarm, Samson O’Brien was already up and showered, his sleeping bag stowed away, all evidence of his nocturnal sojourn erased from the back room on the top floor of his office building, and the shower cubicle and tray wiped down.
The former was to prevent Delilah Metcalfe from discovering that her tenant was making full use of his contract by sleeping illicitly on her premises; the latter was to prevent Ida Capstick, the cleaner, from killing him.
Despite being back in Bruncliffe for nearly two months, Samson had yet to find accommodation – basically because he couldn’t afford it. When he’d made the decision to return to his home town, he hadn’t banked on discovering the family farm sold and himself homeless. What’s more, he’d impulsively spent the money that could have secured his bed and board on a six-month rental of the office downstairs, offering to pay it all up front in order to cement the deal with a landlady who hadn’t wanted him around. A landlady who shared that opinion with most of the town.
While his generous payment had been enough to overcome Delilah’s objections, he’d left himself without anywhere to stay. Or the means to pay for it. Which is when he’d discovered the top floor. Above the two levels of offices, this old house on a back road of Bruncliffe had a third storey with a bathroom and two spare rooms. And it was in the rear bedroom that he’d made his bed that very first night, persuading himself that it was temporary; that there was no need to tell anyone because he would find somewhere else soon.
Seven weeks later and he was still spending his days in a mesh of deceit, pretending to leave work every evening for Hellifield – a village five miles down the road where he claimed to be renting a flat – only to return to the office when Delilah had gone home to her cottage up on Crag Lane. Then he sneaked upstairs to sleep amongst the stored furniture. In Delilah’s old bed. Not that he’d known it was hers. He’d discovered that nugget of information when the formidable Ida Capstick had caught him red-handed – and red-faced – wearing nothing but a sleepy expression as she walked in on him one early morning. Once the cleaning lady had overcome the shock, she’d agreed to keep quiet, on the understanding that he made an effort to find somewhere else to stay.
As the clank of the cleaner’s metal bucket came up the stairs, Samson placed a mug of tea on the kitchen table, a plate of biscuits next to it. He’d assessed the strength of the tea by comparing it to the dark brown of the teapot it was poured from – lighter was not acceptable, anything darker was – and had then coloured it almost white with milk.
It was far removed from the beverage he knew as tea, but he’d learned over the last few weeks or so that there was no fighting it. There was no drinking it, either, as far as he was concerned.
‘Tha’s still camping out upstairs then?’ Ida Capstick entered the kitchen, placed a shopping bag on the floor and threw a couple of letters on the table, before sitting down to her morning cuppa. And biscuits. The posh ones. That had been part of the deal that bought her silence.
‘Morning, Ida,’ said Samson with a grin, amused as always by her gruff approach to conversation. Small talk didn’t exist in the Capstick household, where words were used as sparingly as money.
Samson had known Ida and her brother George all his life. Living in a cottage on a smallholding at the start of Thorpdale that they’d inherited from their parents, they had been the O’Briens’ only neighbours. Some in Bruncliffe would say that was an unlucky draw, Thorpdale – the little-known dale tucked away to the north of the town – being isolated enough, without having the reticent Capsticks as the nearest human contact. Samson knew from experience, however, that while Ida and George might not bother with social conventions, they were steadfast friends.
When Kathleen O’Brien was diagnosed with the cancer that would take her from her family within six short months, Ida Capstick had stepped in. Cleaning. Cooking. Looking after young Samson when his parents were at the hospital.
And when Joseph O’Brien had started drowning his sorrows not long after his wife’s death, George Capstick – funny old George, with his unique approach to life – had simply started working on the farm. No discussion with Joseph or his son. No broadcasting his good deeds to the world. He appeared when work needed doing. And then he left, usually on whichever vintage tractor he was restoring at the time.
Neither of the Capstick siblings had ever cast judgement on the catastrophe that became the O’Brien family, as Joseph sank deeper and deeper into the bottle and the farm sank deeper into dept. Neither had they shunned Bruncliffe’s black sheep when he’d returned in October – although the welcome from George at Twistleton Farm had been typically unconventional, levelling a shotgun at Samson as he crossed his own threshold.
Except it wasn’t his threshold any more, as George had told him. Rick Procter, Bruncliffe’s most successful property developer, had bought it off a drunk Joseph O’Brien for a song, and had further added to the injury by then selling the broken man a retirement apartment in the newly built – and Procter Properties-owned – Fellside Court. An apartment that Joseph could only afford through a shared-ownership scheme, which meant he was still paying rent.
A solid farmhouse and all that land. And in return? A one-bedroomed box in the heart of town, and a lifetime of further payments. It made Samson’s stomach sour to think about it. Made him feel guilty, too. Perhaps none of this would have come to pass if he’d stayed. He certainly wouldn’t be skulking around in his landlady’s spare rooms, making unauthorised use of the furniture she had stored up there.
‘Yes,’ said Samson, taking a seat opposite Ida. ‘I’m still here. Haven’t quite got the money together yet to move out.’
Ida tutted, taking a second biscuit as she did so. ‘Tha’ll never have it, either, if tha won’t take paying!’ She fixed him with a glare, daring him to contradict her.
But she was right. Samson had refused payment for his first Dales Detective Agency case, unwilling to benefit from an investigation that had rocked the town and left many people grieving. Since then, he’d had a steady stream of trifling assignments – a lost cat; a background check on a prospective au pair; some detailed property-search requests for the solicitor, Matthew Thistlethwaite; a couple of security risk-assessments for local businesses . . . It was just about enough to keep his head above water, but if he was going to survive for the six months he’d allocated himself in Bruncliffe, then he needed more substantial work.
Yet only yesterday he�
��d turned away Alice Shepherd. Ida would have a fit if she knew.
‘Anyway, there’s the post.’ The cleaner pointed at the letters she’d dropped on the table. ‘Though why tha can’t just have it redirected here, I don’t know.’
‘It’s complicated,’ he said, picking up the envelopes. Complicated in that he didn’t want his address broadcast, certainly not to the few threads remaining from his life in London. He wasn’t sure what would follow him up the motorway to Yorkshire but he knew something would, and it probably wouldn’t be friendly. For now, using the unoccupied Twistleton Farm as a dead-drop and its caretaker, George Capstick, as a go-between was the safest option.
‘I’ve said nowt about our arrangement,’ Ida continued, ‘but the postman can’t help but have noticed. And as he’s a cousin of Mrs Pettiford in the bank, happen it won’t be long before the whole town knows tha’s been getting letters delivered up there.’
‘It shouldn’t be for much longer. Hopefully I’ll have sorted everything before Easter.’
Sorted everything. Such a euphemism for the mess he was in.
‘Humph.’ Ida gave another of her wide range of non-lexical utterances, most of which were of the disapproving kind, and reached down to pass the large bag at her feet to Samson. ‘Well, don’t go making this lot last until then.’
Samson grinned and blushed at the same time. His washing. Since he was eight, he’d never had anyone do his laundry for him. It was one of the chores he’d taken on, as grieving father and son tried to establish a new routine in the O’Brien household. Now he felt a pang of embarrassment as Ida presented him with a pile of clean and ironed clothes.
‘There’s no need for you to do this,’ he protested.
‘Like I told thee before, I’ll not have tha clothing dripping all over that bathroom upstairs.’
‘But I can go to the launderette.’
‘Launderette? Those gossips in there would have tha secrets out across Bruncliffe in a heartbeat.’
‘At least let me pay, then,’ insisted Samson, reaching for his wallet.
A ferocious shake of the head stalled his hand. ‘It’s Rick Procter as is paying me to do this. About time he put something back. Figure tha washing is a good place to start.’ Ida’s mouth twitched, the closest Samson had ever seen her come to a smile, and he raised his hands in resignation. If his old neighbour was happy to subsidise doing his laundry through her cleaning job at the property developer’s Fellside Court, he knew better than to argue.
‘Thank you. And have another biscuit.’ He pushed the plate towards her and while she was deliberating over which one to choose, he bit the bullet. ‘About your job at Fellside Court . . .’
‘What about it?’ Her eyes were on him, sharp, sensing this wasn’t going to be an idle chat about cleaning.
‘What’s it like working there? I mean, what’s the atmosphere like?’
She shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say. I get my work done and leave. Same as anywhere.’
‘And the staff? Do they get on well with the residents?’
It was almost visible, the closing of her defences, like a drawbridge pulled up before his questions. ‘I don’t gossip, young man. Tha should know that by now.’
‘It’s not gossip – it’s just . . .’ Samson ran a hand through his hair, not quite sure what it was that had prompted him to ask Ida about Fellside Court. When Alice Shepherd had left the office the day before, he’d made the decision not to pursue her case. He simply couldn’t justify charging her for his time, investigating claims which had as much substance as a will-o’-the-wisp. But he’d woken this morning with the frail pensioner on his mind.
‘Alice Shepherd came to see me yesterday,’ he said, knowing that his client confidentiality wouldn’t be broken by the cleaner. Even so, he found himself toning down the old lady’s words – murder sounding too far-fetched for first thing on a Thursday morning. ‘She wants to hire me because she thinks she’s in danger.’
Ida put her mug of tea on the table and stared at Samson. ‘Mrs Shepherd said that?’
‘Quite clearly, and several times.’
‘What kind of danger?’
He shook his head and told a lie. ‘She wasn’t specific. But she seemed to think there’s something going on at Fellside Court.’
‘And tha believes her?’
‘I don’t know. She was confused about so many details. And it seems so absurd. I just wondered if you’d picked up on anything while you were cleaning there.’
A sharp snort greeted him. ‘There’s no one wandering round with an axe, if that’s what tha means.’ Ida picked her tea back up, contemplating the query as she drank. ‘The place is well run now, and the folk in there seem happy,’ she finally said. ‘But I wouldn’t have put Mrs Shepherd down as one of them that seek drama. If she feels worried about something, happen there might be substance to it.’
‘What did you mean by well run now? Wasn’t it before?’
Ida sniffed. ‘Depends on tha standards, I suppose. All I know is tha can tell the tone of a place by how clean the management are. And that young woman who took over in October keeps her office pristine. There might be some as find her ways a bit sharp but there’s allowances have to be made for foreigners.’
‘She’s foreign?’
‘Eastern European. Not sure where.’
‘Do the residents get on with her?’
Arms folding across her chest, Ida pursed her lips as she considered him across the table. ‘Tha’s taking Mrs Shepherd’s case?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Then I’m not sure I should say anything further. I’m not one for idle conjecturing.’
Samson sighed. He was cornered by the strict moral codes of his former neighbour. ‘How about if I promise to at least go and visit Mrs Shepherd? Have a look around Fellside Court? Then would you tell me what you think?’
The arms unfolded and Ida stood, clearing the table with brisk efficiency. ‘I’ll tell thee what I think. I think we’re all afraid of outsiders, and that does nowt but get stronger as we age.’
‘You’re saying they’re afraid of this new woman . . . what’s her name . . . ?’
‘Ana Stoyanova. Not so much afraid as suspicious. Tha knows only too well what folk round here can be like. It’s not all of them, mind. Just a handful. But it may be enough to have poisoned Mrs Shepherd’s mind. What with the couple of deaths there’s been in there of late.’
‘More than usual?’
‘More than usual for normal life, perhaps. Not more than usual for a place filled with old folk.’
‘Nothing strange about them?’
Ida turned from stacking the dishwasher. ‘No. Nothing strange. Don’t think Bruncliffe could hide anything like that.’
‘What about the thefts? Mrs Shepherd mentioned that some things had gone missing.’
‘Aye, I heard about that. A watch and a scarf or something.’ She shrugged. ‘It was just before I started working there. You’d be best off asking around when you call in.’ She reached for the empty bag on the floor and made her way into the hall, the clank of the bucket as she picked it up signalling the end of her interrogation.
‘Thanks, Ida,’ Samson said.
She paused at the foot of the stairs to the second floor and looked back at him. ‘While tha’s over there, tha may as well call in on tha father. Only proper a son should visit now and again.’
Then, with heavy steps of admonishment, she ascended to the floor above, leaving Samson with his second lecture on filial duties in two days. Bruncliffe and its interfering culture, he decided as he headed downstairs to his office, was definitely an acquired taste. A taste he seemed to have lost in his years down south.
‘What made you change your mind?’ Delilah asked on the walk up Fell Lane to Fellside Court, the swollen, dark clouds seeming to rest on the roof of the building. While the threatening weather of the day before had merely resulted in an overnight dusting of snow on the top of the fells, these clou
ds forecast rain. Lots of it, before the day was out. She’d been lucky to get a run in first thing.
‘I needed the fresh air,’ said Samson. He bent down to pat the grey shadow ambling along next to him. ‘Isn’t that so, Tolpuddle?’
The dog barked up at him while Delilah rolled her eyes. ‘Guilty conscience, more like.’
Samson greeted the accuracy of her remark with silence and she felt a momentary twinge of contrition, knowing from bitter experience how Bruncliffe’s tight-knit society excelled at inspiring feelings of shame. The returned black sheep didn’t need her adding to it. She’d already noticed him hang his head as they walked past Peaks Patisserie in the marketplace earlier – her sister-in-law Lucy’s cafe no doubt reminding him of Ryan.
‘Are you still on for coming up to the barn this weekend?’ she asked, changing the subject. The barn in question was High Laithe, a building in mid-conversion up on the fells above Bruncliffe. It was where Lucy, Ryan and their son Nathan had made their home, living in a caravan while Ryan worked on the property between tours of duty with the army. When he’d been killed in Afghanistan two years ago, work had stalled. When the caravan had been burned to the ground in early November – a victim of the cyclone of trouble that had hit the town – Lucy and Nathan had been left with nowhere to stay. So Will and Ash, the oldest and youngest of the five Metcalfe brothers, had stepped in, working up at the barn every weekend, trying to get it habitable for Christmas. Their efforts has been augmented with help from friends and from the two other Metcalfe lads, Craig and Chris, whenever they could make it back to Bruncliffe.
‘Sure,’ said Samson. ‘If you think Will won’t mind? I got the sense when I was up there last Sunday that he didn’t appreciate my presence.’
It was Delilah’s turn to feel the sharp edge of self-reproach, something she’d forever associate with her eldest brother, whose approval she never seemed to win. Allowing Samson O’Brien to rent an office from her hadn’t eased the relationship between the siblings. In Will Metcalfe’s eyes, Samson was the man who’d left town under a black cloud and had then, as Ryan’s best friend and godfather to Nathan, neglected his obligations following Ryan’s death. The Metcalfes weren’t known as the forgiving type. Will was living up to that reputation, and although there’d been some thawing in the frostiness with which the two men greeted each other since the dramatic events the month before, he still wasn’t in the mood to accept Samson into the family fold.
Date with Malice Page 4