Money Never Sleeps

by Whitelaw, Stella

  There was also a stone-flagged quadrangle surrounded by bedrooms and two floors of bedrooms above. It was both a suntrap and a snow trap. The family’s children had played there in all weathers, their forbidding nanny keeping a stern eye on them. There was even the ghost of a woman in blue who stood at the foot of the main stairs in a cold spot but no one talked about her, not even the domestic staff, many of whom had seen her as they hurried past on some errand.

  Fancy turned into the tree-lined drive and drove carefully over the speed bumps. Her car was fragile; so was her back. She was exhausted by the long drive. She had turned off the M1 at junction twenty-eight and had then got lost. None of the road signs said what she was looking for. Her brain was not working. She did not know where to go, where she would sleep, where her lectures would be held. And she needed the bathroom.

  The drive turned into a circular, tree-fringed area and ahead was a modern glass foyer, built onto the front entrance of the old house. It looked strange, out of keeping with the creeper-covered walls and large bay windows.

  A thin woman was hovering in reception, a woman wearing layers of flowing clothes, shades of mauve and pink and primrose, her white hair pinned up with bamboo sticks. She floated rather than walked. But when she heard the car arriving, she turned and her smile of welcome was warm and genuine.

  ‘Hello, Miss Jones? I’m Melody Marchant, your conference hostess.’

  Fancy nearly said Shall I fasten my seat belt? But she bit her tongue in time. She had a reputation for saying the wrong thing. She put on a sort of returning smile, too tired for anything better.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘What a pretty name. Middle shelf, lower eye level.’

  Melody looked blank, blinking very bright blue eyes. Her lashes were spiked with mascara. She had once been very pretty, but time had added wrinkles and taken away the bloom. But she still had an aura of past beauty.

  ‘Your spot on the bookshelves in Waterstones. When your book is published.’

  ‘Oh, goodness, you mean when I get published. I write children’s books, mostly about foxes and hedgehogs. My mother sang in a pop group called Melody once. That’s how I got my writing name. They had one hit and then were never heard of again. But I use her name because children can remember it.’

  ‘Lovely story.’

  ‘Did you have a good journey?’

  ‘Reasonable,’ said Fancy. ‘No accidents. No one threw anything off a bridge at me. No lumps of concrete.’

  ‘I’ll show you to your room. Don’t worry about getting lost. You’ll soon find your way about.’

  Melody took some of Fancy’s bags and set off at a fast trot, upstairs, along narrow corridors, right turns, left turns, her many chiffon scarves floating behind her. This was obviously part of the original old house. She flung open one of the doors. Light flooded into the corridor, illuminating the walls.

  Fancy blinked. The room was vast. It had six single beds in it. A big bay window was draped with brocade curtains and ties. It was a route march to the dressing table on the other side of the room. The huge mahogany wardrobe might be the secret path to Narnia if she could open the heavy doors.

  ‘We thought you might like some space.’

  ‘Am I sharing?’

  ‘Heavens, no. This is all yours. You can sleep in a different bed every night if you like.’ Melody laughed.

  ‘Like Goldilocks. Now, if you don’t mind, I need the bathroom.’

  ‘Ah,’ Melody drew a deep breath. ‘Slight problem now. These original bedrooms are not en suite. But there’s an excellent bathroom close at hand – bath, shower, very luxurious. You would be sharing that with one other speaker.’

  ‘I don’t have a robe,’ said Fancy, itemizing her hurried packing. She slept in a teddy bear T-shirt or nightshirt, according to current level of shrinkage. Sweet Dreams was printed under the teddy. The other speaker might get the wrong idea. ‘Can I have a different room? This is too big for me. I’d be lost in it.’

  And she didn’t like it. There was a feeling from the past of agonizing childbirth, pain, death. She was already being difficult. She would get a reputation. They would not invite her back.

  ‘Let me see if there’s a vacancy in Lakeside, with a view of the lake. I don’t think it’s quite full yet. It’s very modern. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Melody floated off like an errant butterfly, while Fancy took advantage of the close-at-hand, luxurious shared bathroom. It was huge. Another converted bedroom. No towels. She waved her hands in the air. A towel was folded on one of the six beds with token wrapped soap but she dared not use it.

  She looked out of the window. The lawn was a hive of bustling people, hugging and kissing each other with shrieks of joy. Old friends meeting from previous years. Others stood about, solitary, newcomers wearing white badges.

  Melody hurried back. ‘There’s a vacant room on the third floor if you don’t mind all the stairs. The girls are getting it ready for you. How about a cup of tea first and I can show you around, introduce you to people.’

  Tea, flapjacks and ginger sponge cake were being served from trolleys on the glassed-in veranda. Cascades of noise rose from the exuberant crowd. Fancy took a cup of tea and sat with it in the garden. The flower beds were a riot of colour. The gardeners were obviously men who loved their work. It was a joy to look at after the bleak motorway. There was no garden to her church home, only rubble and weeds.

  Melody had rushed off to hostess another speaker who had arrived and required her attention. Fancy liked the idea of a room on the third floor. No one could chuck a lump of concrete to that height.

  She looked at the printed programme that Melody had given her to study. There were five non-stop specialist courses, lots of two-part courses and even more one-off workshops. Meals, book room, dancing, quizzes and writing time were slotted in with breathtaking persistence. She felt tired just reading the programme.

  And every evening there was a guest speaker. Someone famous or who had something to say. She recognized several names, including her own. She wondered now if she had anything new to say in the face of all this talent.

  There were five specialist courses. Callum McKay was running the novel course. Fancy had read several of his big Glaswegian sagas. He wrote under a woman’s name for some reason. Brad Hunt was running non-fiction. Maria Lister was talking about children’s books and Phoebe Marr was the poetry guru. Fancy knew none of these other names. Her own course, crime, was given equal status.

  The chairman of the conference was Fergus Nelson, a semi-retired publisher with a good reputation. Jessie Whytely was the conference secretary and Richard Gerard the treasurer. She knew nothing about either of them or their writing credentials. Then there was a string of committee members.

  Fancy gave up. She was never good at remembering names. She had to meet the people first, then she could pin a name to a face.

  Suddenly a hand clamped onto her shoulder. The shock tipped her cup and the spilt tea sprayed her knees. The bright sun and sky were blocked out by a tall figure. She shook off the hand, fear clamping her heart, and tried to struggle to her feet.

  ‘Sorry, Miss Jones. It is Miss Jones, isn’t it? The crime writer? I didn’t mean to surprise you. I thought you saw me coming.’

  He was over six feet tall, lean and muscular, dark hair tinged with grey and combed forward like a Roman senator, brown eyes concerned behind gold-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a crisp navy shirt tucked into jeans. His badge was yellow, which meant he had been to the conference before, but Fancy couldn’t read the small print of his name.

  ‘Do I know you?’ she asked, dabbing her knees, fruitlessly.

  He produced a clean handkerchief and offered it to her. ‘Try this.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m Jed. John Edwards. I’ve been emailing you for several weeks about a cold case I wrote about in your Macabre Mysteries magazine. It’s a diabolical case and needs solving.’

  ‘Jed? John Edwards?’ She sat
down, still quivering. It rang a faint bell.

  ‘Schoolboy slang. J Edwards combined and shortened. Complicated email address because of former police connection.’ Jed Edwards sat down on the bench beside her and took the cup from her hand. ‘I’ll get you another cup.’

  ‘Former police connection? You never said that in your emails.’

  ‘Detective chief superintendent, retired. Or rather, semi-retired, not quite on the slag heap yet.’ His eyes weren’t smiling now.

  Fancy looked at Jed Edwards with more interest. ‘That’s pretty high up,’ she said. ‘But you look too young to be retired.’

  He moved his right hand slowly but it went almost nowhere, flapped around. ‘Useless,’ he said. ‘Can’t do anything with it. Can’t do the required two-handed gun hold. A couple of bullets shattered the elbow. Permanent damage. And there was bleeding into a muscle, which has led to a stiff arm.’

  Fancy was shocked. One never heard of the injuries sustained in the course of duty. Newspapers preferred heroics or grisly deaths.

  ‘I’m sorry, how awful. Can’t you move it at all?’

  ‘It has a variable degree of function.’

  ‘Perhaps we could talk about Macabre Mysteries some other time.’

  ‘Thanks but I need more than five minutes. The case is a weird one.’

  Fancy tried not to look at him. Even for a one-armed, semi-retired police officer, he was very good-looking in an austere way. But she was not interested in men. No way, no more. She would never go through that again.

  ‘How did you know I would be here?’

  ‘It’s advertised on the conference website. Not a bad photo of you. I’d know you anywhere.’

  Jed Edwards wondered why Fancy Jones suddenly looked scared. It was something to do with mentioning the website and the photo. She didn’t like it. He was good at reading people. He had been doing it all his working life.

  Fancy shuddered. The website, of course. Anyone could know where she was this week. Whoever threw the concrete, the rucksack, made the thrust in her back. They could find out where she was, follow her. If they were linked. Perhaps she was not even safe here. They might even be here already.

  Perhaps if she hid on the high moors of Kinder Scout and Bleaklow, she would be safe. The dry stone walls would protect her from the winds at first, but when she reached the treeless southern slopes, she would be at the mercy of the killing air.

  Unless she found a cave. Already her writer’s mind was conceiving a plot. She might never use it but she tucked it away in her mental filing cabinet for a rainy day.

  TWO

  Saturday Evening

  Room 425 Lakeside was ideal. It was high up on the third floor with a view of a wide path below and the single-storey Orchard Room, built on a grassy knoll opposite. Fancy hoped its name didn’t imply the destruction of an orchard. Perhaps the ripe apples and plums had rolled down the hill and got trodden on.

  The room had a double bed covered in a bluey-green Jacobean patterned quilt that matched the curtains. A polished wood unit along one entire wall acted as a combined desk, dressing table and tea-making area. It had mirrors and lamps above. The wardrobe was an open hanging rail with shelves below. It saved on doors.

  Fancy liked the fact that the key tag went into a slot on the wall and the lights wouldn’t come on without that activation. It reassured her that she would not leave the room without her key.

  The small white bathroom was spotless and compact. The shower had simple controls. She hated showers where she had to read the instructions with her glasses on before switching on the water. Especially if she forgot her glasses.

  She began to relax in the safety of the room, hanging up her clothes and putting them in drawers. Everything she’d brought was black or white, or black and white. It was her conference wardrobe. She did not have to think. She took the same clothes everywhere. All her underwear was black or white. The only colour in her packing was the pink teddy bear nightshirt, and a pink leather belt, a blue scarf , a scarlet pashmina and a couple of silk flowers. She had no idea why she had packed the flowers. Mental aberration. She wasn’t going Spanish dancing.

  At home, when she was working, she put on the first clothes that came to hand. Doorstep salesmen on a cold call often thought she was the cleaner.

  She thought about Jed Edwards. She did not trust him, although she wasn’t sure why. She did not trust anyone who approached her openly about a cold case story. She did not want to talk about her magazine or cold cases. Yet, he seemed a pleasant man and she was sorry about his arm. He may have been earmarked for promotion, for greater things, before that bullet ploughed into his elbow. Perhaps chief constable next with a salary, smart uniform and pension to match.

  Fancy stretched out on the bed and opened the programme again, wondering where she appeared in the complicated grid of events and destinations. She was supposed to be at the chairman’s reception now, tutors meeting white-badgers. It would look as if she didn’t care or was snooty if she didn’t turn up.

  She changed quickly into tailored black trousers and a classic black and white silk blouse. She splashed her face and quickly renewed her eye make-up, pulling her hair back into a casual topknot, fingering forward the side wings. A squirt of Dior Tender Passion and she was ready. She almost forgot her key and the tutor name badge. The badge hung from a royal blue lanyard and spoilt her colour scheme. She would have to change that. Fast.

  There was a lift. A tired, recorded male voice intoned Doors opening and then Doors closing as if these actions were invisible. Fancy hurried down the path, map-reading at the same time. The reception was being held in another far-flung area. The babble of voices told her she was going in the right direction.

  ‘Miss Jones? Francine Jones? You found us then. Come along in and meet everyone. What would you like to drink? You must be gasping. I’m Jessie, by the way. I know a short cut to the bar.’

  Fancy had to squint to read the name badge. It would be rude to peer closely at the woman’s bosom. This was Jessie Whytely, the conference secretary. She was a bustling young woman, faintly harassed, badly cut blonde hair in wild disarray, long gold earrings bashing her rouged cheeks. She was wearing purple. Everything was purple. Shirt, trousers, shoes, bangles. Even her nail varnish was purple.

  The choice was house red or house white, or should it be called conference red or conference white? The glasses were small, only a few degrees larger than a thimble, she thought. Fancy smiled politely and was introduced to a dozen eager white badgers who flocked around, all wanting to know how to write the next best-selling crime book. Fancy wondered if it was a good idea, telling them how to do it. They might be taking the bread and butter out of her own mouth. And publishing was a cut-throat market. Getting worse by the day.

  ‘There’s a big market for crime these days,’ she said. ‘Readers love it. Yes, do come along to my course. I’ll help you all I can. You can ask me anything.’

  She trawled in a few more delegates to her course; she didn’t want an empty room. Nothing worse than talking to a spattering of faces, a handful of hopefuls, no vibrant feedback or interaction.

  ‘Let me get you another drink.’ It was Jed Edwards. He was wearing the same clothes but had added a blue tie for decorum.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Fancy. ‘That one went down rather fast.’

  ‘As they do,’ he said, weaving his way through the crowd at the drinks table. He returned, managing to hold two drinks in one hand. Fancy took hers before there was another spillage. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said. ‘I’m not a gatecrasher. I’m doing a two-parter on police procedure. Both talks on the same day. A marathon.’

  ‘I might come to that,’ said Fancy, knowing her ignorance about police procedure. She was constantly ringing up the press office at Scotland Yard.

  ‘You’d be welcome. But don’t ask me anything too tricky,’ he said, echoing her words with a wicked grin. He had good teeth. No nicotine stains. ‘You seem a bit uptight about so
mething. Is it this place? Northcote can be overwhelming. All these people, when you are used to being on your own.’

  ‘No, no, Northcote is fine and everyone is being kind and helpful. It’s been a strange week in London, that’s all.’

  He nodded as if he understood when he didn’t. ‘We all get strange weeks. We’d better circulate among the white-badgers. That’s what we are here for. It’s why we get a free drink. Or two.’

  ‘How did you get that tie on with your hand…?’ There. She’d asked it when she had vowed to herself that she wouldn’t. She was too nosey.

  ‘My ties are already tied for me. I loop it over my head and tighten up the knot. Unless, of course, I can find a nice young woman who’s good at ties.’

  ‘I’m sure there are plenty around,’ she murmured, moving away.

  Fancy found she was expected to sit at the committee table for all meals. They had a round table reserved in a far corner of the dining room. Everyone else sat nine-apiece at rectangular tables. It all looked friendly in a big airy room, one side all windows looking out onto the garden. It was divided into areas with arches and low shelves for bags and books. The walls were cream, the tablecloths white, the napkins maroon. The carnation sprigs on the tables were fresh flowers.

  ‘Speakers always sit with the committee,’ said Jessie. ‘It’s a tradition.’

  The main course came from the kitchen in big pie dishes and someone at each table drew the short straw and had to serve out the food. Tonight it was steak pie with peas and parsnips and new potatoes. It was a strange choice of menu for a Saturday night supper but Fancy was hungry and ate the lot. When had she last eaten proper food? But she was not hungry enough for the school-style sherryless trifle with hundreds and thousands on top and opted for a banana from the nearby fruit bowl. The banana was stone cold, like marble, straight from a refrigerator.

  There was a thermos of coffee on every table and again it was serve yourself.