by Ann Granger
‘OK, Janice,’ I retorted. ‘Let’s stick to facts. Have you established yet just how the killer got into the office that morning? Did someone force the lock?’
She pursed her lips and studied me. ‘There’s no sign it was forced but it might have been a skilled job. Both Mrs Duke and her part-time helper deny lending their keys out to anyone.You’re sure you’ve never held a key?’
‘Never! I haven’t done that much work for Susie. I never had need of an office key. The door was open when I got there that morning. I told the cops at the time.’
‘Yes, you did. I’m still not convinced you don’t know more about that than you’re saying, Fran. I’ve warned you before about withholding information.’
‘I’ve told you everything I know!’ I protested, raising my voice despite myself and attracting renewed interest from the direction of the tea urns.
‘At the very least, he had something he wanted to discuss with you,’ Morgan ploughed on obstinately. ‘You have to have some idea what that was, Fran.’
‘No, I don’t. Unless it concerned Edna and you don’t want to look into anything concerning Edna. In my mind, she’s what matters in all this. All right, so let’s say Duane wanted to discuss something with me. Someone else wanted to stop him! Come on.’ I was getting increasingly hot under the collar.
Morgan bit into her biscuit, showering crumbs on the table top. ‘I hate these things,’ she said, staring at the remains of it in her hand. ‘They’re too sweet and don’t taste of anything else.’
‘So why did you take it?’
‘Not much choice, was there?’
The ladies looked offended and then concerned. They muttered together. We all have our worries. I worried about Edna, Morgan about Duane’s death and the ladies about brands of biscuits. That’s what it is with worries: they may be big or small and other people may find your own unimportant. But to you they are the only thing to matter at the moment.
The man at the next table folded his crossword, rose to his feet and limped away. He at least hadn’t been listening or, if he had, wasn’t bothered about listening any further. He presumably had his own private worry. There was no way of telling whether it was an inoperable condition or the frustration of not working out five across.
‘I’m Edna’s friend,’ I said as quietly as I could. ‘As far as I know I’m her only friend. Simon and Nikki at the hostel care, but they’re professionals and Edna is just one of their residents. If she gets to be too much of a problem, they’ll move her out somewhere else. In the meantime, I intend to talk to Adam Ferrier and I hope to Culpeper himself. I can give you Jessica Davis’s phone number if you want to talk to her.’
‘I only want to talk to her if she has information regarding the death of Duane Gardner. Do you think she has?’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t say. It’s up to you whether you talk to her or not. But I do think you ought to speak to Susie Duke again and ask her about Les Hooper and the key he holds to the office. And while you’re about it, you might try putting the frighteners on Les himself.’
‘We are acquainted with Mr Hooper,’ said Morgan enigmatically.
Now, why didn’t that surprise me?
‘I’m sorry to hear Mrs Duke is still using him to do odd jobs. We have told her she might do well to reconsider that.’
I decided to chuck my bit of information into the brew. I owed Les nothing and if the police came between him and Susie, so much the better.
‘He works - worked - for Lottie and Duane sometimes, and for other private investigators, I think.’
‘Regulations governing private investigation agencies are being tightened up,’ Morgan told me. ‘New rules won’t tolerate someone like Mr Hooper.’
I didn’t remind her that someone like Les was a real artist when it came to getting round the rules.
Chapter Twelve
When I got back home I discovered the payphone in the hall was as dead as a dodo. Not many tenants used it nowadays. Everyone except me has a mobile. For all I knew, the phone company might even have disconnected the thing. I went over to the newsagent’s and told Ganesh and Hari about Edna. Hari never knew Edna but he was interested.
‘It is a very bad business,’ he said, shaking his head and looking thoroughly satisfied. Hari enjoys bad news. You know where you are with bad news, that’s his motto. Good news generally carries an unseen snag with it. Sooner or later you find out what it is but until you do, it lurks there in the background, ready to jump out and surprise you. But bad news means you know the worst straightaway and you are not lulled into any sense of false optimism.
‘And our house phone has given up the ghost,’ I went on, ‘so can I borrow your mobile, Ganesh?’
‘Sure,’ he said, looking worried. ‘Come up to the flat.’
Once in the flat above the shop he fixed me with a glittering eye like the old mariner in the poem. ‘For once I’m in complete agreement with my uncle. This is a thoroughly bad business and you’ve meddled in it enough. Take the mobile, by all means. I’m happier knowing you can call me here at any time. But leave all these people to sort themselves out. The police are on the case, anyway.’
‘Not on Edna’s case,’ I corrected. ‘They’re following up Duane’s murder. No one is saying the word “murder” but that’s what it is - was. I’m not looking for Duane’s killer. I’m trying to protect Edna.’
‘You’re splitting hairs, that’s what you’re doing,’ said Ganesh, handing over the mobile phone. ‘And don’t lose this. You lost the last one I lent you.’
I’d dropped the previous phone in a river in Oxford, but that’s another story. I promised him I’d take great care of this one.
As soon as I got out of there I rang Lottie Forester and asked her if she had managed to set up a meeting with Adam Ferrier for me. I also told her my house phone was out and gave her the number of Ganesh’s mobile.
‘Can you come back to my place this evening?’ she asked. ‘Around seven thirty?’
I was surprised but pleased that she’d set up the meeting so quickly. Rocking and rattling my way out there again in the chugging suburban train, this time uncomfortably packed with homeward-bound commuters, I tried to list all the questions I wanted to ask Ferrier, but instead found myself thinking of Duane Gardner. A phrase of Lottie’s kept popping into my head.
‘Duane was a good detective.’
If he hadn’t been killed, he and Lottie would have run a profitable little business out there in Teddington. I felt sorry for Lottie, sorry for Duane.
Good detective, good detective, good detective . . . chuntered the train.
‘He was a bloody good detective!’ I muttered suddenly aloud, gathering a few alarmed and in some cases resigned looks. It’s not unusual to find yourself opposite someone muttering to him or herself on local trains around London but I didn’t want to be tagged as one of the mentally scrambled. ‘Sorry . . .’ I apologised to anyone who could hear me.
Alarm increased and heads went down over paperback novels or disappeared behind copies of the Evening Standard. Travellers who had armed themselves with neither simply closed their eyes.
I returned to my thoughts. He must have been very good to have found Edna as he had. But how had he found her? How had he known she was still alive and in London? She could have been anywhere in the country or given her age and circumstances have shuffled off the mortal coil years ago.
‘Because,’ said that other person who lives in my head and goes by my name but thinks more logically than I generally do, ‘someone gave him a clue.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked the other Fran, silently this time.
‘Someone told him where to look. Someone knew about her.’
‘All right, who?’ I persisted.
‘You’ll have to find out, won’t you?’ said other Fran. ‘That’s something you might ask this chap Ferrier.’
‘He didn’t know where she was, you twit!’ I informed my alter ego. ‘If he had, he could
have gone and got her himself. He needn’t have employed Duane.’
‘All right,’ said the other Fran smugly, ‘so someone else is out there, someone else has a finger in this pie.’
It was still light when I got off at Fulwell station but the sky glowed gold and cerise in the setting sun. By the time I left to go home again, it would be dark. A few lights were already shining inside homes as I passed by them, but Lottie’s house was in darkness. A car was parked on the weed-covered drive, one of those little boxy jobs. I didn’t know if it belonged to Lottie or to a visitor.
I rang the bell. There was a pause and then I did see an electric glow through the frosted glass panels of the door. Someone had opened a door at the rear of the hall. Feet tapped towards me and the front door was opened by Lottie. She’d changed into her gipsy skirt and a silky top and still wore her favourite boots. She had also tied up her hair with a sort of bandanna; hoop earrings dangled from her lobes. She looked as if she was about to invite me in to tell my fortune.
‘We’re in the kitchen,’ she said without any preamble and not waiting to hear any greeting from me. ‘Go on through.’
She stood aside to allow me to pass. ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled and obeyed instructions. She followed me to the kitchen door and reached past me to push it open. The full glow of electric light struck my face and made me blink.
‘This is Fran,’ Lottie, behind my shoulder, announced me. ‘This is Adam and his sister, Becky,’ she added casually to me.
I’d gathered my wits by now and accustomed my eyes to the bright light. The three of them had evidently been sitting round the kitchen table quaffing white wine and stuffing themselves with nibbles. An opened bottle and three used glasses stood witness together with a saucer of pistachio nuts and two empty crisp packets.
The young man stood up and held out his hand. His sister remained seated.
‘Hullo,’ he said pleasantly.
The siblings were different in build as well as sex. The boy - I suppose he was at least my age and probably more but I found myself thinking of him as a boy - was of medium height but strong and chunky and very good-looking with lots of reddish-blond curly hair and a wide, easy smile.
The girl wasn’t just short but tiny. Her long fair hair fell dead straight like a mermaid’s over her shoulders and down to her bust. Like me, she was pretty flat in the chest department. She wore a T-shirt with bunnies gambolling across it. It looked like a kid’s garment but, given her small size, she could probably wear stuff intended for bigger kids. Yet she had a woman’s face, for all the baby-blue eyes and pouting little mouth. Men probably curled up and rolled over before her.
I shook Adam’s proffered hand and then held mine out to the girl. She leaned across the table, took my fingers in her limp little mitt and gave them a consolatory squeeze as if I were the bereaved, then drooped back into her chair.
Lottie had joined us. She indicated a chair to me and put a glass down in front of me. I sat. I felt very much the odd one out. It wasn’t just that they were all so good-looking, or obviously well heeled, or even that they knew one another so that I was heavily disadvantaged. Friends communicate in ways outsiders don’t even notice. Chiefly, though, I felt the outsider because they simply came from another world.
At my private school, during my brief stay there, I’d brushed shoulders with lots of kids like Lottie and Becky. They hadn’t liked me then and I suspected that, deep down, these two girls didn’t really like me now. Lottie had some sort of an excuse for her dislike. She connected Duane’s death with my appearance on the scene. I didn’t know what the boy thought of me. I reminded myself to call him a young man. But he looked the sort who could turn on personal charm - and turn it off again if he thought it was being wasted on an unprofitable target.
Lottie poured me a glass of the white. It was Chardonnay, I noticed. I’m not keen on Chardonnay but this wasn’t the moment to start a discussion of the fine points of different wines. It had to be better than the dreadful white plonk I’d served poor Morgan.
‘Lottie tells us,’ Adam Ferrier began. He sounded a trifle pompous. ‘That you’ll be helping her out in her business for a while, until things are settled.’
This wasn’t quite what Lottie and I had agreed, but as it was obviously what she had told them, I went along with it and nodded.
He looked a little less sure. ‘I suppose that’s all right. I mean, when I contacted Lottie and Duane on behalf of our grandfather, I hadn’t anticipated another person getting to know our private family interests. You’ll understand?’ It was a question.
I assured him I understood. ‘I’ve been in this business for a little while myself,’ I said. ‘I’m an associate of Susie Duke who runs the Duke Detective Agency. I fully understand the need for discretion.’
There is a difference between saying you understand the need for discretion and a promise not to talk about things with other people, but I was banking on the Ferriers not picking that up. Instead, Adam had picked up something else.
He glanced nervously at Lottie, who had taken her seat at the table with us and was twirling her empty wine glass.
‘The Duke Detective Agency,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that where poor Duane . . .’
‘Yes, that’s right!’ I said in a bright, businesslike tone.
Lottie said, without looking up at any of us, ‘Fran found his body.’
The Ferriers stared at me. Adam’s eyes gained a calculating expression.
Becky spoke in a curiously cultivated little-girl voice which gave me the heebie-jeebies. ‘Are you investigating his death?’
‘No, of course I’m not!’ I said sternly, giving her a look which I hoped told her I’d appreciate it if she could try and talk like a regular adult human. ‘That’s for the police.’
‘Are they including you in their investigations?’ asked her brother more sharply.
‘I gave a statement about finding him. Other than that I have no knowledge of what the police are doing. Lottie probably knows more about it than I do.’ I was putting down my markers with a firm hand. I wasn’t going to discuss anything with these two other than the matter of Edna. I wanted information from them. I wasn’t about to give them any.
‘They say they are treating his death as suspicious,’ said Lottie dully. ‘I really hate that word. Why can’t they just come out and say murder?’
I opened my mouth to say there was a procedure in these matters but it wouldn’t do to sound too knowledgeable. ‘I only found him,’ I repeated. ‘My bad luck.’
‘How awful,’ breathed Becky, batting her eyelids. She reminded me of one of those dolls with the long-lashed eyes that close when you put them flat, and open again, disconcertingly bright blue and glassy, when you sit them up. ‘You must have been really scared.’ Blink, blink.
Yuk! Help! ‘Yeah, well,’ I mumbled, finding myself unexpectedly stuck for a reply. ‘It was sort of weird.’
‘Bloody awful!’ boomed Adam suddenly with unexpected energy and far too loudly so that I jumped.
So was this. I’d stumbled back into Alice in Wonderland, this time at the point of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Lottie was presiding like the Mad Hatter himself - for hat read bandanna - and Adam, who I fancied was developing an odd gleam in his eyes, was the March Hare. I sipped my wine and hoped Becky, like the dormouse, would soon fall asleep with her head resting on the saucer of pistachio nuts. She looked as if she might have as little to contribute to our conversation.
I looked round the kitchen desperately for some topic of conversation which would get us away from the image of Duane’s dead body and me standing over it which was occupying all our minds just at the moment.
My gaze fell on a series of pale oblong shapes on the wall opposite my seat. I frowned.
‘You’ve taken down the family photos,’ I said to Lottie.
She was hunched over her glass of wine and cast a dismissive glance up at the area.
‘I can’t settle to anything,’ she said. ‘I just
think about Duane all the time. I thought, perhaps I’d make a start on redoing this kitchen. I could paint the walls and it would take my mind off it all. I went to Homebase and got a couple of tins of emulsion.’
‘What colour?’ asked Becky, showing a flicker of animation.
‘Sort of duck-egg blue.’
What colour jelly . . .?
I owed it to Edna not to let myself be outmanoeuvred by this trio. To be fair to them, it was that individual worry thing again. Lottie’s worry wasn’t what colour to paint the walls; it was who killed Duane and what this meant to her future. The Ferriers worried, I deduced, about old Mr Culpeper. But much as people try to seduce you into sharing their problems, mine was still my old ex-bag lady. I said as much and they turned to me.