One to Six, Buckle to Sticks (Grasshopper Lawns Book 11)

by EJ Lamprey

  ‘And even more interesting that she’d inherited money from Mose.’ Edge sipped her coffee. ‘I can’t imagine any circumstances under which I’d leave money to Marjorie. And he died so recently, even if he’d left her everything he owned it’ll be months before it’s all settled and paid out. So why did she vanish like that? Damn, I wish there was a way of seeing his will!’

  ‘You get on very well with the Bursar, don’t you?’ Vivian asked archly and Edge gurgled involuntarily. The Trust Bursar had a definite crush on her, and hung around beaming whenever they met at one of the parties at the house. ‘So, ask him. Maybe Mose kept a copy in the strongroom?’

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea.’ Edge looked at her, wide-eyed. ‘I’ve certainly got a copy of mine there.’

  ‘Most of us probably do.’ Vivian shrugged ‘I know I have. They do encourage everyone to keep wills and passports and that sort of thing locked up. And it may not be as secure as a safe-deposit box at a bank, but it’s much handier.’

  ~~~

  Edge popped her head round the door of the main office, and beamed at Hamish Kirby, who looked surprised but delighted, jumping to his feet. He was a portly little man with shrewd eyes behind thick spectacles and only reached Edge’s shoulder, but he bustled about getting her coffee which she accepted with an inward sigh behind a grateful simper. Three cups in one morning—

  ‘I trust you’re not looking for Harriet,’ he settled back behind his desk and glowed at her. ‘She’s off sorting out bridging finance, you know. Could take hours.’

  ‘No, I was looking just for you, Hamish.’ Edge abruptly switched off Mata Hari as she realized what he had just said. ‘Bridging finance?’

  ‘Well, now, keep it to yourself, I shouldn’t really have said anything.’ He cautioned. ‘But Harriet has agreed to buy Mose’s bungalow. Not an easy decision, because it forces her to take early retirement, can’t have a resident on the Board, conflict of interest. And the timing was shocking, of course, all her funds are still tied up in long-term investments which only mature at the end of next year in time for her planned retirement. There won’t be any problem with the bridging loan, of course, and we’re helping where we can, we’ll sign as guarantors if necessary, but she wants to negotiate the lowest-possible rates, as you can imagine.’

  He heaved a sigh but looked, Edge thought, unrepentant. His next words explained his relief. ‘The Trust guarantees we’ll sell the bungalows quickly, so that estates can be settled without delay. That means anyone on the buyers list has to be able to put up finance immediately—well, the deposit in a month, and the balance in ninety days. She just never expected one to come up so soon. This appalling scandal—well. Her retirement will be a big problem for us, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Edge echoed and hid her smile on her coffee cup. Hamish was known as Of-Course-Kirby to the residents, and Sylvia did a wickedly funny imitation of him. ‘So will you have to take on her responsibilities in the meantime? Does that mean we’ll have you here every day?’

  ‘Ha, not that I wouldn’t love to be based here, but no, Harriet doesn’t officially become a resident until the sale completes. Not that we won’t need the whole ninety days to recruit someone else, it isn’t an easy post to fill, you know that yourself. And they have to be prepared to live in the Administrator’s apartment upstairs, so that does mean someone single without dependent children. And not too ambitious—we don’t want someone who sees this as a step on a long ladder, we want them to stay on for at least ten years.’

  ‘So, somebody efficient and good at their job but not ambitious.’ Edge shook her head solemnly. ‘You’ll have your work cut out. Funny, I had the impression Harriet was well down on the list?’

  ‘Well, she was, on the tenant list. But she was on the buyer list as well, and that’s much shorter. I contacted each person in turn, and they’d all read that ridiculous article that the papers picked up and of course they weren’t happy. They hedged. They said they’d wait for the next one. Even one resident, who has been waiting for a bungalow for two years! Even worse, the tenant in the bungalow has the best part of a year’s lease still to run, and wasn’t interested in leaving earlier, despite the murder. I had rather hoped—it has been absolutely terrible for our reputation. Especially with the media suggesting it could be several murders. Shocking. It was the same with the tenants list, people usually fall over themselves to take up their option when a place comes up, but this time I was well down the list before someone agreed to take on number ten, and that was with just a natural death.’

  He had the grace to look slightly sheepish. ‘Between you and me, Harriet wasn’t terribly keen to take the bungalow—the financing, and having to take early retirement, but of course in her position—if it ever came out that one of the Trust staff had refused to take the option because of the scandal! Well, it would have looked terrible. She’s been very good about it. It isn’t as if she didn’t want a bungalow eventually, and as I said to her, who knows when your turn could come up again? It could have taken years. It isn’t all bad for the Trust, either, we lose a top administrator but she’ll still be here to settle in the next person. She’ll have to move out of the house apartment, of course, as soon as we find someone, and can’t go into the bungalow because of the tenant, but I think I’ve managed to talk her into taking Betsy’s apartment. It means it’ll stand empty until we have our new administrator, but frankly I don’t think we could have let it otherwise. Not with the murder right there on the spot!’

  ‘Talking of the scandal;’ Edge had a complicated cover story set up but Hamish, poor sweet, was being so indiscreet anyway she decided to ditch the story and creep up on her question. ‘The suggestion that Mose was murdered—I’ve just learned that he changed his will recently, and there’s the chance, well, the odd coincidence, that one of his beneficiaries has done a disappearing act?’

  ‘One of his beneficiaries?’ Hamish looked astonished. ‘I helped him with the change, because of course the main part of his estate is the bungalow. And apart from bequests to a couple of major charities, which aren’t going to be disappearing, ha, he left everything to his niece. It was a very simple will.’

  ‘And you have a copy here?’ Edge looked alert, and Hamish nodded.

  ‘Yes, he ran two copies off on his printer and signed them with me and his neighbour as witnesses, and I brought the copy away with me. Ironically, only a few weeks before he died. Poor fellow, but of course he already knew by that

  time his heart could let him down at any moment. Who was it you meant, this beneficiary?’

  ‘Helen somebody, his cleaner. Apparently.’

  Hamish’s eyebrows climbed into his hair. ‘Helen Webster? Oh no, that can’t be right. She’s a nice enough woman and I happen to know she gets lots of tips but no, not a beneficiary. Unless of course he made a new will, but the last one was only a few weeks ago. Anyway, not that I’m not enjoying chatting to you, because I am, but what can I do for you?’

  ‘Oh, er, I wanted to check the expiry date on my passport. I’m planning a little trip to the sun in February.’ Edge improvised rapidly and Hamish looked faintly wistful but got out his keys. The safety boxes were kept in a locked room to which, Edge knew, all the staff had keys, but Hamish was the only person who had a master key to all the boxes in case one of the residents lost their own. Friendly and unsuspicious as he had been, she didn’t dare ask him to open Mose’s box so she could see the altered will, but once back in her apartment she rang Kirsty in a state of some excitement.

  ‘Yes, we know about the will.’ Kirsty sounded surprised. ‘Aunt, this really is none of your business and I wouldn’t be telling you except that you’re roaring off finding out things and I wish you wouldn’t. But yes, he left five thousand pounds to his cleaner. About the same to two charities. All signed and witnessed and very straightforward.’

  ‘Except that he didn’t.’ Edge insisted. ‘Just to charity, and his niece. Honestly, Kirsty, there’s a copy of the will here,
you know. And the cleaner has vanished, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she has.’ Kirsty covered the phone and Edge could hear her muffled voice talking to someone else before she came back on the line. ‘Aunt, are you sure about this? Mose’s solicitor thought he had the only copy of the will, and there certainly wasn’t a copy in Mose’s apartment.’

  ‘Well, he could have changed it without Hamish knowing, I suppose. Who were the witnesses on the solicitor’s copy? The copy here was signed by Hamish and one of Mose’s neighbours. That would be either Olga, my neighbour, or the guy on the other side of him, somebody Mitchell. Bruce, I think.’

  ‘Hang on—yes, so was the solicitor’s copy. Brian Mitchell and Hamish Kirby. But five thousand pounds isn’t a reason to kill anyone. And she’s disappeared anyway. The solicitor can’t trace her. Aunt, I’m coming to visit tomorrow afternoon anyway, let me look into this and I’ll bring you up to speed then?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tuesday – Kirsty to tea

  ‘She’s definately gone.’ Kirsty accepted a shop-bought muffin and a cup of tea, kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her in the chair. ‘And once we’d got the copy from your Hamish, we showed him the one the solicitor got. He says it looks like his signature but it isn’t the will he signed. So—don’t spread this around too much, right, we really don’t want the media getting this yet? Promise? Then we ran the name Helen Webster through the records and she died five years ago! Next stop the agency, which luckily has quite strict screening procedures, including taking fingerprints from their employees. It turns out Helen Webster is actually Helen Spencer, who did five years for forgery. I don’t need to tell you which prison, do I?’

  ‘Ouch.’ Edge winced. ‘So she’s back to her old tricks, sets up a nice five thousand pound legacy for herself, gets assigned a new apartment to clean and walks straight into someone who knows not only who she really is but what she really is. But still—you’d think she’d just melt away and give up on the five thousand. Not murder Betsy!’

  ‘Aye, but you’re forgetting the murder Miz Campbell called us about. Helen has to have killed the old fellow in the first place. Far from fade away, she probably had some kind of run in on Wednesday with Betsy—who by the way phoned the cleaning agency on Wednesday afternoon to ask if the Trust knew they were being sent ex-cons, but went all mysterious about it, wouldn’t actually name names. The woman who runs the agency said that because of that she didn’t know who was being accused, as of course they don’t know who gets assigned to which apartment. The whole team reported for duty as usual on Thursday, while the agency were going to double check their records and references. Sometime between signing in that morning and the team being collected that afternoon, Helen murdered Betsy and took off. The actual details—whether Betsy let Helen in, got a confession out of her, then rang the police, or whether Helen let herself in, having stolen a key the day before— well, we’ve got an alert out asking for her to help with our enquiries and we’ll learn the details soon enough when she’s picked up. But at least that mystery is largely cleared up.’

  ‘So I was able to help after all?’ Edge asked pointedly and Kirsty grinned at her over her cup of tea.

  ‘Iain now calls you Jessica Fletcher, and he said I can tell you things within reason, and we can both sit back and wait for you to solve our cases. And that he’ll be consulting you on one or two others, but I think he was joking.’

  ‘All very well but we haven’t solved this one yet.’ Edge said briskly. ‘I was told very emphatically by a policeperson I trust implicitly—well, you—that Mose was definitely not murdered. Hoping for an early heart attack is one thing, and the choking was just a bonus. But Kirsty, darling, I really don’t know that you—or Betsy—can call that murder. Except that I did hear something odd about the panic buttons? And I’ll tell you something else, Helen, the only time I saw her, looked a bit scrawny. Betsy was a big strong woman.’

  ‘Well, Iain isn’t happy about it and neither am I. But the Trust is really on our backs to get this sorted as quickly and quietly as possible, that Hamish Kirby has been phoning to girn at us twice a day. What’s worrying Iain is the panic buttons—’ Kirsty stopped, looking guilty.

  Edge fixed her with a bright eye and Kirsty shrugged. ‘I really, really shouldn’t be telling you this, but you’ll guess it, knowing you, as soon as they bring in the new safety thing. From next week you’ll be checking them on a weekly basis. Two of the three panic buttons in Mr McKenzie’s apartment apparently had to be replaced. We’ve spoken to the maintenance people and they said they’d definately been sabotaged. Considering it was Helen who found him dead, when she used her passkey to let herself in, it would have been logical for her to unscrew the backs, tighten the wires, screw them up again and, you’re right, nobody would ever find out. But she couldn’t be sure she’d be the one who found him, could she? And even odder, the main panic button was missing. The wires had been snipped through and the buzzer was gone. Nobody, at the time, seemed to think there was anything odd about that, but of course it was so obviously a natural death.’

  ‘Real-ly.’ Edge said thoughtfully. ‘Well, well. That does give one furiously to think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, if she did, and that’s pure speculation, you realize, if she did sabotage them she may have had trouble reversing it as quickly as she hoped. Or heard someone coming when she was halfway through fixing it, so she just cut it off hastily instead.’

  ‘Making it obvious there was something wrong with them? Oh, no. No, if someone was coming it would have been better to leave it half fixed, maybe tuck the screwdriver into Mose’s hand so it would look as if he’d been fiddling with them. That’s what I would have done.’

  ‘Please don’t ever turn to crime!’ Kirsty begged fervently. ‘Anyway, oh Jessica, how do you see Helen getting the original will?’

  ‘Och, sweetie, that was easy. Most of the cleaners live in town, even I used to give Mournful Marjorie prescriptions to drop off for me on her way home, so I could collect them the next day without a tedious wait at the pharmacy, before they changed things so we couldn’t handle our own meds. You’ll find Mose asked Helen to drop the will off at his solicitor, and she steamed it open, grabbed the chance to print off an adjusted one—we tend to go out when our cleaners arrive, you know, to give them a fair run at the place—forged the signatures and then dropped it off as requested. But I didn’t realize it was Helen who found him, that’s thrown my theories into a muddle. I can see her jamming his panic buttons and, I don’t know, leaving a plastic tarantula or something in his sock drawer to bring on a heart attack. But not being so clumsy about hiding it. When did he actually die?’

  ‘Choked on his morning pastry.’ Kirsty said succinctly. ‘Helen found him at nine, when she started her shift, and the doctor they called in reckoned he’d been dead at least an hour. Megan said he never came to house breakfasts because he told her once that he’s up at six and liked his morning coffee, his toast, and a pastry, in that order, and not to have to wait for it. The house only opens for breakfast at seven thirty, apparently.’

  ‘So that would be why it was Helen who found him.’ Edge said thoughtfully. ‘Megan keeps an eye out and if she notices someone hasn’t come in for a booked meal she gets someone to check, but if he wasn’t booked for breakfasts she wouldn’t worry before lunchtime. Our rent includes a daily house meal, and most of us have it as breakfast, so she’d check on me, for example, if I hadn’t appeared by ten. That’s very—hang on, darling, you’ve made me nervous.’ Edge pushed the panic button on the coffee table and within seconds her house phone flashed and rang. ‘Sorry, Megan love, just me being clumsy, thanks for calling!’ She smiled ruefully across at Kirsty as she replaced the phone.

  ‘Reassured? And Helen would have had time to pocket her unneeded tarantula.’ Kirsty said drily. ‘Now, are we going to see that new thriller at the Hippodrome, or are we going to sit here and continue my busman’s holiday all afternoon?’
<
br />   CHAPTER SIX

  Saturday – Christmas market

  The reindeer were making their annual pre-Christmas appearance in Onderness, so the town centre was in full swing, the weekly market far busier than usual, and an overflow of families filling the teashop, excited children piping shrilly as their exhausted parents stared dully into space. One family gathered themselves together and left just as Edge and Vivian entered. Vivian made a bee-line for the empty table while Edge went to place their orders. She joined her friend with a sigh of heartfelt relief, plonked her packages on one of the spare chairs, and flexed her fingers.

  ‘I should never have worn these new shoes,’ she groaned, ‘do you think anyone will notice if I take them off?’

  ‘You’ll never get them on again,’ Vivian warned, ‘and if you think I’ll walk with you while you’re padding barefoot down the high street through the slush, you can think again. People of our age who wear new shoes, especially with heels like that, on a shopping trip, should expect to suffer.’

  ‘They’re divinely comfortable, as long as I don’t walk too far in them.’ Edge said defensively. ‘I’ll keep them for short outings until they’re fully broken in. And they do wonders for my ankles.’

  ‘Humph.’ Vivian, whose ankles had long since disappeared, opened her mouth to make a tart comment but said instead, ‘Oh, there’s your niece.’

  Edge twisted round in her chair as Kirsty caught sight of them and headed towards their table.

  ‘Hi, Aunt, hi, Mrs Oliver. Having a—’ at that moment her shoulder radio murmured and she tilted her head to hear better.

  ‘Is she wearing purple?’ she asked the radio, listened again, then said, ‘you can’t be far from the teashop, and there’s two of them here.’ She turned her attention to them again. ‘That was good timing. I think we’ve got one of your lot having a senior moment.’