Rattling the Bones

by Ann Granger

  ‘Oh,’ I gasped, ‘so you’ve got the keys to Lottie’s house, too? You’re a great one for collecting keys, aren’t you?’

  ‘Shut up!’ he said in a cold little voice and pushed me through the opened door.

  It was at that moment I felt the first small spurt of fear pushing aside all the other emotions I’d experienced when he’d discovered me teetering on that sawhorse. Now I realised I wasn’t just in his power alone but at the mercy of them both. They had worked together in a neat little conspiracy. They wouldn’t allow me to let the world know about it. If Adam had sounded angry I would have worried less; but that cold little voice reminded me I was dealing with a killer.

  My ever-active imagination raced ahead. How would they do it? As they dealt with Duane, with a hypodermic? I saw my body being found in some deserted spot. How would I be identified? Would they leave Ganesh’s mobile phone on me? Would my photo appear on television crime prevention programmes? Would the woman at the corner café remember me as the girl who never came back for the croissants?

  ‘Take a seat,’ invited Adam with a sarcastic grimace. ‘Take off your wig and make yourself at home, why don’t you?’

  I sat down at the kitchen table. The room smelled of fresh paint. Lottie had made a start but hadn’t got very far. What looked like an experimental few brush strokes decorated the surround of the door frame. Perhaps she’d abandoned the work because she hadn’t liked the colour, after all. I can’t say duck-egg blue is my favourite shade.

  Adam seated himself near me, where he could cover any attempt I might make at escape either through the back door or into the hall towards the front door.

  ‘Why aren’t you doing something financial in the city?’ I asked resentfully. ‘What are you doing here this morning?’

  I pulled off the wig, not because he had suggested it but because it made my scalp sweaty and scratchy. Glad to be free of it, I tossed it on the table as nonchalantly as possible and it lay there looking like some sort of road kill.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘What am I doing here? Oughtn’t I to be asking you that?’

  I tried to brazen it through. Fat chance of success, I knew, but I had to try. It’s the actor in me. ‘I came to see Lottie. She’s not here. I took a look round the garden. It was just curiosity.’

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ said Ferrier unpleasantly.

  Well, it didn’t matter if he believed my explanation or not. Once he knew I’d seen the motorbike, how I’d come to see it was immaterial. He wasn’t a fool, though. He knew I hadn’t taken a sudden interest in gardening.

  His mind was running on, too.

  ‘What tipped you off?’ he asked with a frown.

  I pointed at the wall behind him but he didn’t turn his head. ‘She took the family photographs down,’ I said. ‘She should have left them there. I noticed them when I first came into this kitchen and talked about her grandmother. She realised afterwards that I might remember enough about that wedding photo of her grandmother to spot a likeness to Edna, the next time I saw Edna. They were sisters, weren’t they, Lilian and Edna, I mean?’

  ‘Had you,’ he asked, without answering my question, ‘spotted a likeness?’

  ‘No, not then. She needn’t have worried. I probably wouldn’t even have looked at them again. But when she took them down it got me wondering. I didn’t buy into the story of hanging a memorial photograph of old Duane up there. That’s his motorbike, isn’t it, out there in the garage all nicely locked away from prying eyes? His pride and joy, I bet.’

  This time he nodded. ‘Yes, the poor sap fancied himself as a ton-up boy in black leathers. He used to take it out at weekends and burn rubber down to Brighton or Bournemouth or some such seaside spot. Sometimes Lottie went with him pillion but she wasn’t keen on travelling like that.’

  ‘But she did ride it herself from time to time?’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘As you’ve been riding it since Duane hung up his leathers for the last time, thanks to you.’

  He still said nothing.

  ‘I’m guessing you were riding it when Edna was nearly knocked down and Lottie was riding the day I was the target. Only it didn’t quite work either time, did it? Killing Duane was the easy part. Getting rid of Edna and me has proved a bit harder, hasn’t it?’

  Adam smiled then and I rather wished he hadn’t. ‘Practice makes perfect,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it right next time - which will be fairly soon.’

  My only hope, as I could see it at the moment, was that he wanted to wait for Lottie to come back and she might have a different idea. His unwillingness to act without her told me that she made the decisions. One of them had been that they should kill her boyfriend and business partner. My blood seemed to stop circulating for a moment. I think I must have looked my horror because Adam smiled again. He probably thought I was contemplating my own death. But I was thinking of Duane and of Lottie’s treachery. It’s happened before that love’s died and, when it hasn’t been easy for one party to disentangle him or herself, then murder has suggested itself as a solution. The lurid details make a double feature in the tabloid press. Usually it’s a shotgun blast in a lonely farmhouse turned luxury home. This time it had been a syringe in the arm in Susie Duke’s office.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘Lottie and Duane never really had that much in common, other than a desire to set up this agency.’

  ‘You met him,’ Adam said with a dismissive shrug.

  ‘Whereas you were an old flame who had come back into her life.You are doing well and living in Docklands and your elderly infirm grandfather is worth a few millions. Suddenly, Duane was inconvenient. Even more inconveniently, he was a good detective. I mean he wasn’t just efficient; he was honourable, too.’

  ‘He was a prat,’ said Adam.

  There are people who see having a conscience as a weakness and Adam was clearly one of them.

  ‘You had a bit of luck,’ I mused, ‘being there when Les came to tell Duane about me. Even luckier, Les managed to lose the Duke Agency’s keys at the same time. How did you know they were the keys to Susie’s office?’

  ‘Les,’ said Adam thoughtfully, ‘the bruiser with the personal hygiene problem? Yes, I saw the keys on the floor and was going to call after him, but then I saw the wally had tied a little tag on them reading “Duke”. No address or anything but they had to be the office keys. I suddenly saw that Fate was playing into my hands. It all seemed rather meant, you know. I just slipped them into my pocket. Duane was up at the bar and didn’t see.’

  ‘You and Lottie plotted together,’ I said dully. ‘Lottie phoned Susie Duke to arrange a set-up meeting to get her out of the office. You, meantime, persuaded Duane that a visit to the Duke Agency to confront me there or to quiz the owner might be a good idea. So he went trustingly with you to what, you knew, would be an empty office. Wasn’t he a bit surprised when you produced the keys?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said crossly. ‘Give me a bit of credit, will you?’

  ‘No, of course, you didn’t. Lottie had got there first and had been hanging about waiting for Susie to leave. She nipped up the stairs and opened up the door so that when you and Duane arrived, you could just walk in, as if the place was occupied and Susie sitting in there waiting for business. Am I right?’

  He only gave that grimace which I could no longer call a smile. ‘You seem good at working things out. Perhaps you and Duane should have set up in business.’

  There was a pause and I got in a dig of my own. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘you’ll never be able to trust her. Whatever Lottie’s motives, to betray Duane like that . . . That’s abnormal. They had been together for years. Not just boyfriend and girlfriend but business partners. They shared this house. They shared their lives. She just abandoned him, cut herself loose, and agreed to let him die. She doesn’t function like other people, Adam. You’ll always have to watch your back.’

  ‘Function like other people?’ he retorted mockingly. ‘That’s a bit rich coming from you. What wou
ld you know about normality?’

  There was a distant rattle from the front door.

  ‘Ah,’ said Adam pleasantly, ‘here’s Lottie now.’

  Footsteps echoed out in the hall as the front door slammed. The kitchen door opened and Lottie appeared red-faced, shiny with sweat, and panting from her run. She froze in the doorway with her eyes popping as they took in me and her jaw dropped.

  ‘What the hell is she doing here?’

  As the words left her lips she suddenly swivelled to look back over her shoulder.

  Lottie hadn’t returned from her run alone.

  The person who had been standing in the hallway behind her moved forward. Lottie backed away into the kitchen as if mesmerised to allow the newcomer full view.

  ‘Jessica!’ Adam leapt to his feet and his chair toppled over backwards with a crash to the floor. ‘What the devil . . .’

  ‘I met Lottie at the door,’ Jessica Davis said, coming further into the room. ‘I was just about to ring her doorbell when she jogged up and so we came in together. Just as well, I fancy.’ She nodded at me. ‘Hullo, Fran.’

  ‘You know Fran?’ Adam’s voice rose to a squeak of incredulity.

  ‘Look,’ Lottie had rallied and now burst into a gabble of speech. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here. I met this woman at the door. She says she’s a friend of your grandfather’s and she wanted to talk to me, so I asked her in. I have no idea what she wants. I don’t know what Fran is doing here and what the hell you’ve been saying to her?’

  The full force of her accusing glare fell on Adam.

  ‘She—’ Adam broke off and his self-possession gave way to confusion and anger. ‘She was snooping round the back by the garage. I thought she was up to no good so I invited her to come in and wait for you so she could explain herself. That’s all. Whatever she chooses to tell you I’ve said, she’s lying. Not that I’ve said anything.’

  Jessica moved in to take smooth command of the situation. She was as elegantly turned out as the previous time we’d met. This time she wore caramel slacks and quilted jacket and another pair of what were probably her trademark big earrings. Not a hair strayed out of place and she showed not a faintest sign of being discomposed mentally in any way. I wasn’t surprised Lottie and Adam were both momentarily at a loss. As a wild card, Jessica was a trump.

  ‘I came to talk to Lottie because there is something I believe she should know - and indeed you should know too, Adam. I’ve discussed this with your grandfather and he agrees, you should both have been told long ago.’ Her voice was as calm and modulated as her appearance and demeanour suggested it should be.

  ‘What?’ Adam and Lottie chimed together. They both looked and sounded completely at sixes and sevens. They didn’t know what was coming.

  ‘Shall I sit down?’

  I had to hand it to Jessica for coolness under fire. I also handed it to her for stagecraft. She knew when to make the audience wait for a punchline. She pulled out a chair and seated herself elegantly; after a second or two, Adam retrieved his fallen chair and followed suit. Lottie, left alone on her feet, unwillingly took the fourth chair. They stared at Jessica in the kind of immobilised fascination rabbits are always supposed to show when faced with a stoat. A trickle of sweat ran from Lottie’s hairline down her brow and along her nose. I don’t think she was even aware of it.

  As for me, my heart was pounding like a drum. With Adam and Lottie’s eyes and attention completely fixed on the newcomer, I should take my chance to bolt out of there but I didn’t intend to miss whatever revelation Jessica was about to make. Whatever it was, as a result of it, all those loose pieces of the jigsaw would fall into place. Nor could I abandon Jessica. The other two could deal with one of us at a time, but not both of us together.

  ‘You know me as the daughter of old friends of your grandfather’s,’ Jessica addressed Adam. ‘As such I’m also a friend of your grandfather’s.’

  ‘I don’t know about friend,’ Adam said stiffly. ‘I know you visit him and sit up there in his room chatting with him. It’s always seemed downright weird to me, what with the age difference and everything. He hasn’t even got his legs, for crying out loud! It’s downright indecent.’

  I opened my mouth and closed it again, not wanting to draw attention back to myself. But indecent? As if Adam Ferrier knew anything about decent behaviour!

  She wasn’t fazed. ‘I suppose it would to you, Adam. But, you see, I’m a little more than Henry’s friend. I’m Henry’s natural daughter - and my mother is Edna Walters.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was as thunderstruck as the others.

  None of us seemed disposed to break the almost palpable silence that seemed to hang in the air. I stole a look at Lottie. Her beautiful face was frozen, as regular and expressionless as marble. She put me in mind of one of those large white angels that tower over Victorian graves.

  Adam’s features, in contrast, were twitching in an alarming manner. I hoped he wasn’t going to have some kind of heart attack.

  He was the first to speak. ‘Rubbish . . .’ he croaked.

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you the whole story?’ Jessica replied sympathetically.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he burst out, her tone unlocking whatever paralysis had momentarily seized him. ‘You better had and it had better be convincing!’

  ‘You can check it all with Henry.’

  Lottie spoke up then in a tight little voice. ‘This has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Oh, but it has, dear,’ said Jessica, turning to her. ‘Because if I am Adam’s aunt, then I am also your cousin at one remove, am I not? We’re all family here.’

  Lottie licked dry lips. ‘She’s not!’ she snapped, jabbing a finger towards me. ‘Get her out of here!’

  ‘No!’ Adam leapt up and grabbed my shoulder although I had made no move to leave. ‘She can’t go—’ He broke off, his mouth working soundlessly.

  ‘You have been blabbing to her!’ Lottie shouted at him.

  ‘No, I haven’t! She’s been rabbiting on but I’ve said nothing, not a bloody word! If she thinks that meant I was agreeing with her, she’s as barmy as she looks.’ He was fighting for self-control as he spoke and it was returning to him. One could almost hear the mechanism clicking round in his brain. ‘There is nothing she can tell the - tell anyone. I found her snooping round, trespassing. She doesn’t know - she can’t prove anything!’

  ‘Shut up!’ yelled Lottie furiously, swinging the finger she had pointed to me, towards Jessica. ‘Not in front of her!’

  I was sure then, even if I’d had few doubts before, who the brain of this outfit was. Treacherous, clever, without any natural feeling or decency but ever resourceful, Lottie Forester, if anyone, would get the conspirators out of the unexpected jam they were in. But not if I had anything to do with it. What’s more, Jessica’s arrival and her shattering news had thrown all the ingredients into the cauldron anew. I decided to give the brew a stir.

  ‘Sometimes the first ideas are the best ones,’ I observed. They all turned their heads to stare at me. ‘I guessed from the first this might be about a will,’ I went on. ‘And it is, isn’t it? Or even two wills? Because your grandfather must have made his will, too, Adam, and probably you and your sister hope to be the main beneficiaries.’

  Lottie was shaking her head. ‘I still don’t believe you,’ she said in an obstinate little voice to Jessica. ‘I won’t believe you whatever yarn you spin us here. How can you be - how can you be the daughter of that crazy old bag lady?’

  Adam had become as pale as a ghost and in a manner of speaking I think everyone knew we were in the presence of the spirits of the past. We had rattled the bones and they had risen from their rest to confront us all.

  ‘I should explain,’ said Jessica. ‘I know this is a shock for you and I do understand that. But when I’ve told you all about it, you’ll understand.’

  ‘I’m with Lottie, I won’t believe it, whatever you claim.’ Adam’s feat
ures were pinched and angry, ‘Frankly, I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what my grandfather says. He’s an old man in poor health and you’ve influenced him. I’ll go to court over that if necessary. You may have got him to believe you’re his natural daughter, but I never will.’

  Jessica gave him a patient smile. A nerve jumped in his throat and Lottie’s alabaster-pale face darkened to puce in suppressed rage.

  I spoke up then. ‘I’ve been finding out a few things, too, about families.’ I looked Lottie full in the face. ‘Your grandmother Lilian and Edna were sisters. What’s more, you knew it.’

  She said nothing. Her face kept that marble whiteness and immobility.

  ‘Did you tell Duane?’ I asked her. ‘Is that the clue that set him on the trail of Edna and allowed him to find her?’

  That angered her. A dull red tinge crept into her white cheeks. ‘No! I didn’t tell him a thing! How the hell do you know?’