I crossed my arms and leaned back against the bench. “Yes, well, lucky break for you. We’ll tick you off the suspect list, then, shall we?”
She sucked in a breath and let it out like a kettle, then offered a sad smile.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just a shock to think of someone with such a strong life force suddenly gone.” I waited for her to continue, and finally, with a sigh, she added, “The difficult thing to remember about one-night stands is that most of the time they should be regarded as just that.”
“The exhibition was five years ago,” I said. “You never heard from her again?”
“No, and really, just as well, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I certainly do.” I couldn’t imagine Adele and Oona as a couple. “So, will you explain it to Pauline?”
“Pauline’s heard about Oona—well, apart from this. She’s heard about mine—and I hers. We decided warts and all would be the best way to proceed.”
“Sounds serious.”
This time her smile was not sad. I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Good on you, girl. And to think I can say that I introduced the two of you.”
Adele laughed. “Just because we met on your doorstep. But I’m sorry about Oona—and sorry you had to cancel your weekend.”
Val appeared at the top of the stairs and paused to give me a smile, and I could feel its warmth across the room. I leaned my head toward Adele and murmured, “We didn’t cancel everything.”
* * *
* * *
Two pies—one steak-and-ale, one chicken-and-ham—and a plate of sausage and mash. And that second bottle of wine. We pretty much solved the problems of the world, the three of us, although we didn’t solve Oona’s murder. That was, after all, the job of the police.
“I’m glad for you that Glynis took it so well,” Adele said as we stood, stretched, and reached for our coats.
“It has nothing to do with me, it’s only that Mrs. Woolgar and the entire board were so taken with Oona.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Val said.
“Never—I can move mountains,” I said. “I wonder—if I shifted the Mendip Hills a few hundred miles, would that impress Mrs. Woolgar as much as Oona did?”
“You’ll let me know when you need help?” Adele asked as we headed downstairs. “Listen, Hayley—you wouldn’t want to be the exhibition manager, would you?”
“Not my job,” I replied.
“Well, it had better be someone’s.”
Once we were on the pavement, Adele walked off in the direction of the Minerva—where Pauline was behind the bar—and Val wrapped his arms round me.
“Say . . .” I paused, and our breath came out in puffs as if we were steam-train locomotives. “Why don’t you go back to your place and pack a few things and come to mine.”
He grinned. “I . . . er . . . didn’t want to presume, but, as it turns out, I have a bag in the boot of my car.”
I threw my arms round his neck. “Good—we’ll have the most important part of our seaside weekend—each other.”
“I tell you what,” he said, and I saw a sparkle in his eyes. “You get out your pail and shovel and I’ll have a load of builder’s sand delivered to Middlebank. We’ll spread it all over the entry.”
“Better not—I don’t want to give Bunter any ideas.”
* * *
* * *
When I stepped out of the shower the next morning, Val was on his phone.
“Yeah, love, of course . . . no, it’ll be perfect . . . no, this doesn’t really have to do with us—with Hayley or me. It’s a police matter . . . Hardly—I met her only once or twice . . . right, give your gran my love, and we’ll see you and your sister tomorrow. Cheers.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked, toweling my hair.
“Tomorrow,” he confirmed. “Dinner. Is that all right?”
Meet the Daughters Evening. “Of course—perfect.” But my voice had jumped an octave.
“Come on,” Val said, guiding me into the kitchen. “You look like you could use a cup of tea. I know I could.”
“I’m delighted they’re coming and that we’ll finally meet,” I said, splashing milk into my mug. “I really am. You know that, don’t you? It’s only that . . . I want to make a good impression.”
“They’ll love you. There wasn’t a problem with Dinah, was there?”
“We didn’t have time to be nervous,” I reminded him. “She surprised us.”
Val laughed. We sat at the table, and a sudden chill came over me. I held my tea close and contemplated what was to come. Dinah had taken to Val immediately—because he was kind and she could see how much I cared for him and because she was a daughter meeting the new man in her mum’s life. Mums and daughters were one thing, but dads and daughters something entirely different. Did Val understand that?
His smile faded a bit.
“You aren’t worried, are you?” I asked.
“No, of course not,” he said in a hurry. “Are you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Good, good.” He rubbed my arm absentmindedly.
We had the decency to exchange embarrassed smiles, and then began to sort out the details. Dinner at his house, of course—the family home. I would be a guest, not the hostess. Best to take these things slowly.
What did they like to eat?
“Fish fingers?” Val offered. “At least, that’s what they liked when they were seven. I don’t remember them eating as teenagers.”
We settled on roast chicken—at least he knew they weren’t vegetarians. At the moment.
* * *
* * *
After breakfast, Val left to clean his house in anticipation of the following evening’s dinner. He lived in a modest but comfortable family home in an aging semidetached south of the river. It had two bedrooms upstairs and, on the ground floor, a small kitchen, the family room—which had been turned into Val’s study—and a tiny sitting room that looked out to the back garden. Val mentioned something about getting the strimmer out. A bit extreme, I thought. After all, it was the dead of winter—weren’t gardens supposed to be all sticks and brown grass?
Meanwhile, I would be spending the morning at the police station. Before I left my flat, though, I rang my mum to explain about Oona, and in return, received a loving dose of sympathy mixed with Carry on, Curator. After that, I told her about dinner with Bess and Becky, and she looked on the sunny side. “They can’t help being lovely young women—they have a fine father. Just as you did.”
A shrewd move on my mum’s part, distracting me like that. My dad had died when I was twelve, but I had fond memories of him, and I now exchanged my worry for pleasant thoughts.
Then she added, “Don’t anticipate problems.”
Too late.
By the time we’d finished our conversation, I was out the door of Middlebank and headed for Manvers Street. Next, I texted Naomi, who had yet to reply to my previous message.
Confirming our dates. Can we chat?
Please don’t write us off.
* * *
* * *
Sergeant Hopgood put me up in my old stomping grounds, Interview #1, where three fat binders waited for me on the table. He gave me a notepad, pushed the compulsory cup of tea on me, and left. I set the cup on a small table next to the mirror-that-wasn’t-really-a-mirror—even I knew that—and opened the first binder. These were the papers that had been scattered about Oona’s office. Police hadn’t attempted any organizing, but they had inserted each sheet in its own plastic sleeve. My transcriptions of Lady Fowling’s notebooks were here as well as Oona’s sketches for the exhibition. She had made notes and marks on my work, and although her comments were practically illegible, it pleased me to see that she had read through.
Was it here—in the material from her ladyship’s not
ebooks—that Oona came across the key to the location of the rare book? I stared hard at each page, hoping to decipher her marks. Words were circled, paragraphs boxed, and loopy pen doodles adorned many margins.
Wait. Loopy doodles that looked like . . . a spiral staircase. Yes—some of them even had lines with knobs on the ends, just like the iron newels at the top and bottom. The spiral staircase was the scene of the crime in Murder Must Advertise—was she using it as a way of marking clues without knowing she foreshadowed her own death? I shivered at the thought.
But try as I might, I could not see a pattern or clue. Oona’s loopy doodles appeared random—next to a poem Lady Fowling titled “Ode to Bunter,” and running alongside her ladyship’s shopping list for a dinner party in the winter of 1955.
Then it struck me. There was no significance in the loops—it looked as if Oona’s pen had been running dry and she had scribbled in the margins trying to get it going again.
I turned the last page in the third binder—Lady Fowling’s jottings about her own detective, François Flambeaux, uncovering a plot to steal the Rosetta stone—and I slumped in my chair. It had just gone two o’clock. I stuck my head out the door of the interview room, caught the nearest uniform, and asked for Sergeant Hopgood.
When he appeared, I said, “I’m missing something—I must be. Let me go through them again. It’s only, just now I need a break.”
“Right you are, Ms. Burke—let’s leave it until Monday, shall we? Now, about this Mr. Moyle.” Hopgood’s eyebrows lifted. “He has form.”
“He’s stolen rare books before?”
“No, it was a punch-up at a car-boot sale in Melksham two years ago—not even over a sale, but an argument about the author of a 1954 book called The Detective’s Companion. Still, we are trying to get in touch with him now to have a few words about Ms. Atherton.”
“Can’t you look at CCTV to find out who went in and out of the Charlotte?”
“Would that we could,” Hopgood replied. “But there are no cameras on that side of the building. The closest are over the road at the Assembly Rooms—pointed the wrong way—and further along at the top of the Bartlett Street shops.”
“Did Oona’s mobile have any . . . vital clues?”
Hopgood’s eyebrows did a little dance before he said, “All work-related calls and texts, it appears. Apart from that last call Ms. Powell made. No, for this enquiry, what we need are eyewitness accounts of comings and goings. I’ve sent out a team to doorstep up and down the road.”
There had been a mob of people watching police arrive Thursday afternoon—after Clara had found Oona and phoned—but they were mere passersby after the fact. Would police also try to find every one of them? What a job.
* * *
* * *
I cut over to Marks & Spencer, ducked in, and walked out eating a sandwich. I paused in Quiet Street to finish the last bite and ring my daughter, expecting to leave a message. Miraculously, she answered.
“Dinah, sweetie, how are you?”
“Mum, Gran phoned earlier and told me about your exhibition manager—how creepy the way she died. Are you involved? Will the police let you solve the case again?”
“Let’s not get carried away—I did not solve anything, and I’m an innocent bystander here. I only wanted to tell you I’m all right. We’ll let the police sort this out—I have enough to do. But it was lovely of your gran to ring, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, Mum. She’s a grand gran.”
I picked up a tone in her voice. “Is there someone with you, Dinah? Am I disturbing?”
“You’re not disturbing,” she said in a rush. “It’s only Dad—he popped by this morning.”
“Did he?” I did my best to keep the acid out of my voice. “And he’s there now?”
“He is. We went out for breakfast—we had a lovely time. He’d heard of this new place in Sheffield that some posh London chef had opened, and he thought it would be great to try out.”
I gritted my teeth—I’d wager a pound to a penny it was Dinah who had paid for that expensive meal and not my ex. Roger was awfully good at spending other people’s money.
“Sounds like a perfect Saturday morning.”
“Mum, do you know what Dad said?”
I steeled myself. Over the years I’d learned to take that phrase of hers as a warning Roger had come up with another of his mostly useless and often expensive—for me—ideas. Dinah loved her dad, and I would not stand in the way of that—he did have many good qualities, although I’d be hard-pressed to rattle off a list on the spot. But she recognized his shortcomings, too. These days, she used Do you know what Dad said? as a signal.
“No, sweetie, what did he say?”
“That he and one of his mates could upgrade the electrics here and save my housemate and me loads of money.”
Even ignoring the fact that Dinah and her friend only rented the house, this was still an incredibly bad idea—what did Roger know about electrics? Nothing. “Sweetie, would you put your dad on the phone,” I suggested mildly, saving my ire for its proper target.
“Dad—Mum wants to talk with you.”
I heard Roger’s voice. “Why don’t you put her on speaker so we can all talk?”
Coward. “Sorry, Dinah sweetie, I have to run,” I said, temporarily abandoning what I knew would be a futile attempt to ask my ex to act like an adult. “You tell your dad I’ll talk with him later. I love you—bye!”
Dropping my phone in my bag, I came round the corner of the Assembly Rooms, where thirty or so students stood in a mob of a queue, chattering in Spanish. I navigated round them, and when I had a clear view across the road to the Charlotte, I saw a man standing outside the door that led to Oona’s office. He had a shaved head and a scarf wrapped round his neck, and—although I couldn’t see it from this distance, a tattoo of a stack of books on his neck. Stuart Bulldog Moyle.
11
I gasped and jumped back, knocking into the students.
“Sorry, so sorry, very sorry,” I said, sinking deeper into their midst. At last hidden from view, I went for my phone, which had disappeared into the depths of my bag. Cursing, I came up with it at last and rang Detective Sergeant Hopgood.
“He’s here,” I blurted out in a strained whisper when the DS answered. “Stuart Moyle. Bulldog is here.”
“Where are you, Ms. Burke?”
“I’m at the Assembly Rooms, and he’s across the road at the Charlotte—in front of the door that leads up to Oona’s office. Just standing there looking at his phone!”
My protective coating of Spanish students began to disappear as they filed in, and I leaned up against the wall of the entry for cover, straining to listen for Hopgood’s reply. After a muffled exchange, he said, “Ms. Burke, please do not approach him. Stay out of sight, and let us take care of this.”
Relief washed over me. “Yes, yes, good. Thank you. I won’t move.” I didn’t think I could. My hands were shaking—my entire body was shaking. It was over—the police would scoop up Moyle, find the evidence they needed that he was the one who had murdered Oona, and we could all get on with our business. I clicked my tongue at him. All this for a book? Murder must never be a means to an end. Murder must . . .
I was too full of nervous energy, and my curiosity got the better of me. I eased my head round the corner and peered across the road just in time for an open-top tour bus to pull up and block my view. People got off, people got on, and the bus departed. When the new tourists had drifted away, the street was empty—including the pavement in front of the Charlotte.
Empty. Where was he? Where had Stuart Bulldog Moyle gone? I eased forward along the building until I reached the corner so that I could look to my right—in the direction of Lansdown Road—then left toward the Circus, and again straight ahead up the road that had no CCTV.
Only after I was certain no one l
ay in wait did I make my way across the road. The blue-and-white tape was gone from the door, and so I assumed police had finished searching inside. Now what?
Moyle had gone. Now I would need to convince police I truly had seen him, and they would probably search the entire area. Sighing, I resigned myself to wait, and while I did so, I gazed up at the building as a scene played out in my mind.
On Thursday afternoon, this door had been unlocked. Someone— Stuart Moyle?—had walked in off the pavement and climbed the wooden steps to the first-floor landing. He had paused, listening, and then slowly tiptoed round and round the spiral staircase until he reached the top. Oona’s door had been open, and he saw her at the desk. But she had taken no notice of him—too chuffed at having solved the Murder Must Advertise treasure hunt.
Did he demand the book? Did they argue? Did she brush him off and stride out of her office while tapping out a text to me? He had caught her, knocked her over the head, and thrown her down the stairs. Did he then go back into the office and search for the book? Did he check if she was even alive before he fled? Was he so callous he could take a life only for the benefit of adding one more book to his shelves?
“Ms. Burke?”
I whirled round. Stuart Moyle stood in front of me—and no police in sight.
Murderers return to the scene of the crime—everyone knows that.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice hoarse with fear.
I judged my chances. He wasn’t tall, although a bit stocky. Still, I wondered if I could give him a good shove and run for it. Why is no one out on the street? If I called for help, who would hear?
“Appointment.”
It took a moment for the word to make sense—and then I noticed the phone in his hand.
“You have an appointment? With whom?”
He glanced down at his phone. “Oona Atherton. The one in charge. Your exhibition. Saw her name online. I rang. She said we’d chat.”
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