Love, Honour & O'Brien

by Jennifer Rowe

  Holly found herself nodding in understanding. Una was a snob, certainly, but she had a point. Live and let live was all very well in principle, but Holly knew how she would feel if her mother died and twelve months later her father was playing slap and tickle with someone less than half his age, who wore slippers with swan’s-down on the toes.

  ‘My father was spending money like water,’ Una Mag-gott went on. ‘He’d been doing it even before he met Lois, but now he’d become the joke of the district. Everyone knew him, everyone knew that Lois was just a gold-digger, and of course the cleaners and delivery people talked about the goings-on in the house. I was embarrassed, and very, very angry—on my mother’s account, and my own.’

  She sighed. ‘So I accepted Alexis’s offer and washed my hands of the whole affair. I didn’t even say goodbye to my father. I just left contact details with his solicitor, who was then Cliff Allnut’s father, Thomas. I’d been in France for about a year when Lois walked out. My father was devastated. He rang me and begged me to come home, but as far as I was concerned, he’d got what he deserved.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Holly. She knew she would have felt the same. But . . . could she have refused the old man if he’d begged? Maybe not. Probably not.

  ‘I should have come, at least for a week or two, but I didn’t,’ Una said harshly. ‘Not then, and not later. I bitterly regret that now, but what’s done is done.’

  She was staring past Holly to the portrait on the entrance hall wall. Her mouth dragged down at the corners and her eyes were bleak. She looked a hundred years old.

  ‘I didn’t see my father again for thirty-five years. Paris became my base, and my job was my life. There was never anything—like that—between Alexis and me. He had a wife and children. But in every other sense we were partners. We travelled all over Europe, doing deals. I had shares in the business. We made decisions together, took risks that paid off. Money poured in. Alexis listened to me. I was indispensable to him. I protected him from people he didn’t want to talk to. People called me “La Dragonne” behind my back. It didn’t worry me.’

  On the contrary, Holly thought, watching the closed face. You liked it, because it meant you had power. She was repulsed. She remembered why she had instinctively disliked Una Maggott on their first meeting. Then she remembered the empathy she had felt when Una was talking about her lost home, and struggled to reconcile the two opposing feelings.

  ‘But—it ended,’ said Una. ‘There was a car accident, in Germany. Alexis was killed. I was left—like this.’ She patted the arms of her chair. ‘I could—can—walk a little, with two sticks, though it’s tedious and painful. Eventually I learned to dress myself, shower and so on. But that was all they could do for me.’

  There was not a trace of self-pity in her voice. Holly’s emotions see-sawed again. The other side of this woman’s ruthlessness was her determination. It was impossible not to admire it.

  ‘Everyone was kind, but I hadn’t made any friends in Europe,’ Una went on. ‘Alexis’s family and I had never been close. My acquaintances were his friends, and our business associates, and during the long months of my rehabilitation they gradually dropped away. I realised I had no one, and for the first time in many years I thought of home. Then—just over twelve months ago it would be now—I had a phone call from Cliff Allnut. My father had had a catastrophic heart attack and was not expected to live.’

  She glanced at Holly’s stricken face and shrugged. ‘I flew home the next day. Eric met me at the airport. He was in full Elvis regalia. Glittering white. He and the hearse caused quite a stir between them.’ Her mouth tweaked into a grim smile.

  ‘We went straight to the hospital. A strange woman was sitting by my father’s bed, holding his hand. Sheena. My father had been unconscious since the heart attack, but just after I arrived, he stirred and started trying to talk. I’ve heard that happens, sometimes, just before the end. Or maybe the nurses were right, and he’d been waiting for me. I don’t know. Anyway, they left me alone with him. We had half an hour—that’s all. It wasn’t a good thirty minutes for either of us.’

  Again she looked at the portrait and the smile faded, leaving her face bitter. And when she drew breath to go on, Holly knew that at last she had come to the climax of her story, and her reason for telling it.

  ‘Maybe if he’d said a single word about my mother it would have been different. But he seemed to have forgotten her. He just rambled on about his other women—about Sheena, first, and then about Lois. He went on and on about how beautiful Lois was, how he’d loved her, how losing her was the worst thing that had ever happened to him . . . on, and on, and on till I thought I’d go mad . . . the sentimental old fool!’

  Her face convulsed. She pressed her lips together, breathing heavily, fighting for calm. When she spoke again, her voice was harsh but steady.

  ‘Finally he got to the point. He told me the secret he’d been keeping for years. Lois had rung him a couple of months after she left. She said she was pregnant—swore the child was his—asked for money. He said she’d had as much as she was going to get out of him and hung up on her. He never heard from her again. And now, thirty-five years later, when he was literally on his deathbed, the thought that he had another child somewhere was preying on his mind.’

  She shook her head. ‘He tried to make me promise to find Lois and the child, make sure they were all right for money. I refused. Among other things, I said that Lois had only ever loved his money and if she really had been pregnant it was ludicrous to think the child was his. He got . . . frantic. He begged me, but I was too angry even to humour him. Then he suddenly went quiet. He never regained consciousness. An hour later, he was dead.’

  Tears were burning behind Holly’s eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s not the best of memories.’ Una’s own eyes were tearless. She seemed quite calm now, as if getting the story off her chest had helped.

  ‘Afterwards, I came straight back to this house. Everything looked smaller than I remembered, and much shabbier, and of course my father had done his outlandish best to ruin it. I resolved to restore it to what it had been, and tried to put everything else out of my mind.’

  She paused and seemed to suppress a sigh. ‘Then, about a month ago, I saw a photograph of Andrew in an old copy of the local newspaper. Eric had brought some old papers in to line the bottom of the python’s cage after he’d cleaned it—he kept a stockpile out the back. I happened to glance at the page on the top of the pile. And there, smiling up at me, was a man who was the spitting image of my father. The resemblance was extraordinary.’

  Involuntarily, Holly turned to look at the portrait. She couldn’t see much resemblance. Except maybe for the reckless twist to the mouth, and the gleam in the small, cunning brown eyes.

  ‘My father when he was younger, of course,’ Una Mag-gott said. ‘When I was a child. When we were . . . close. The article—it was about Andrew setting up business in Spring-wood— said that he was thirty-four, so the age was right. It also said he had been abandoned as a baby and had no idea who his natural parents were.’

  A little shiver ran up Holly’s spine. She turned back to Una, who nodded, apparently satisfied with her reaction.

  ‘I contacted Andrew—asked him to come here, pretending to want financial advice. The moment he walked in I knew I was right. He was a Maggott.’

  Holly imagined Andrew McNish, elegant in suit and tie, knocking at the door of the grand, decaying, eerie old house, eventually finding himself locked in with the snake, the mural, the avid woman in the wheelchair. Thinking he was onto something. Wondering how much he could get out of it. Doing what came naturally. With no idea . . .

  ‘I didn’t say anything at first,’ said Una. ‘I let him go through his paces. He was charming, of course, but I saw straight away that he was a twister. I didn’t work with Alexis Delafont for nearly forty years without learning to read the signs. But that made me even more convinced. My father was a twiste
r too. Lying was second nature to him, when he wanted something. Andrew had a smooth surface, but underneath he was just like Dad. As I said, a chip off the old block.’

  A scale off the old python, thought Holly. She had started to feel sick. For lots of reasons.

  ‘I’m a private woman, Ms Cage,’ Maggott said. ‘I haven’t told anyone else all this. My motivation isn’t their business, and I don’t care what they think of me. But I’ve been frank with you because I have no choice. I have to convince you that I’m quite sane, and deadly serious, because I want you to go on helping me. It’s beyond me to start all over again with someone else. I don’t want you walking out on me because you think Allnut and Sheena are right, and you’ll be taking advantage of a delusional old woman if you stay. Do you understand me?’

  Holly nodded. She was finding it hard to breathe. She could almost feel scaly coils tightening around her, crushing her chest, binding her hand and foot.

  ‘All right,’ Maggott said. ‘Now. It seems Andrew had some girl in tow when he met me. But that doesn’t mean he was still in touch with her when he disappeared, does it? It doesn’t mean she helped him get over the fence.’

  ‘Not really,’ Holly managed to say.

  It wasn’t me anyway, Ms Maggott. I didn’t help Andrew climb the fence. I can’t speak for the glamorous redhead, though— Andrew’s ex-receptionist, who was probably up to her neck in his funny business. Who maybe decided she didn’t want to be ex anymore, when she found out that Andrew was taking off, and in the money.

  A reflexive wave of jealousy rose in her but almost instantly subsided, leaving behind only a feeling of cold distaste. She noted this and was grimly glad.

  ‘The fence is a complete red herring anyway,’ Maggott went on. ‘I only got Martin to come and check it because I could see you were letting it worry you. The stairs didn’t creak—that’s the important thing. Andrew never came downstairs—he never left this house. Did you manage to contact Mr O’Brien last night?’

  Holly shook her head.

  Da-da-da-dah! Da-da-da-dah!

  Holly jumped violently and gaped at her bellowing shoulder bag. Surely she’d turned O’Brien’s phone to silent! Was she being haunted?

  ‘Get that!’ urged Una Maggott. ‘It might be O’Brien! Tell him about the attack on me. Ask him about the sniffer dogs.’

  Holly found the phone and answered it.

  ‘Cage speaking.’

  ‘Who are you?’ a female voice snapped. ‘Put me onto O’Brien.’

  ‘I’m sorry, he’s not available at the moment,’ said Holly, her eyes on Una Maggott, who scowled and sped past her into the bedroom part of the double room.

  ‘Oh really?’ jeered the voice on the phone. ‘Well, you can tell him that I put his precious bomber jacket in the Vinnie’s bin. If he wants it so badly, he can buy it back. Tell him not to call me again. And you can tell him from me to drop dead.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Holly.

  The caller snorted and hung up.

  Una Maggott reappeared from the bedroom. Balanced on her knees was a huge black torch. It was a dead ringer for the one employed by Trevor Purse in his pursuit of bedbugs.

  Trevor Purse! Trevor Purse’s fifty bucks! Trevor Purse’s straying wife! Ten-forty-five!

  Holly looked wildly at her watch and was amazed to see that it was still only ten-fifteen.

  ‘Here,’ Una said, pushing the torch at her. ‘You’d better get started on the search. Don’t worry about me. I’ll lock myself in again. No one will be able to get at me.’

  ‘Ms Maggott—’

  ‘Don’t bother about the bedrooms at this stage. I just said that to stir them up. It’s highly unlikely they’ve stowed the things in their own rooms—too risky. The attic is a possibility, but—’

  ‘Ms Maggott, I can’t stay,’ Holly blurted out, fending off the torch and backing out into the entrance hall. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got other commitments today. I tried to tell you before, but . . .’

  Her stomach churned as the haggard face staring up at her went slack with dismay.

  ‘But I’ll be back,’ she charged on recklessly. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll come back—later.’

  ‘When?’ The question was tremulous. Again Holly felt an overwhelming surge of pity.

  ‘Late afternoon . . . early evening—I’m not quite sure.

  But as soon as I can. Okay?’ She took another step back.

  Una rolled her chair partway through the door, then seemed to realise pursuit was pointless and stopped. She nodded in dull acceptance.

  ‘Just try to get some rest,’ Holly urged. ‘And please let Sheena bring you something to eat, too, Ms Maggott. You need—’

  ‘I’m not touching anything that comes out of that kitchen,’ snapped Una, with some return of her old spirit. ‘I’ve got fruit and biscuits in my room, and they’ll do me till you get back. At least I know that nothing in my room’s been tampered with.’

  She nodded darkly towards the back of the house. ‘They won’t get me today at any rate,’ she added, raising her voice as if to be sure that anyone lurking in the shadows, or listening from the top of the stairs, wouldn’t miss a single word. ‘I’m locking myself in till you come back. And you’ll be here to guard me tonight, won’t you, Ms Cage? That’s agreed?’

  Holly hesitated. She knew this was crazy. She knew she could search the house till kingdom come and she wouldn’t find any trace of Andrew’s bag, Andrew’s coffee mug, or the silver teaspoons. She knew Una Maggott wasn’t really in danger— couldn’t be. All the people in the house were . . . just normal people. Even Eric. Even Lily. Even the loathsome Dulcie. Underneath all the trappings, all the eccentricity, they were completely ordinary.

  But ordinary people did murder. You read about it all the time.

  ‘Please, Ms Cage,’ Una muttered. Suddenly there was fear in her eyes.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be here, Ms Maggott,’ said Holly. ‘That’s a promise.’ And she made sure to speak loudly. Just in case.

  16

  Thanks to Trevor Purse’s little map, Holly found Wattle Crescent, Bullaburra, with no trouble at all. It was a determinedly suburban street of modest project homes. The only reminders of the bush from which it had been carved just a generation or two ago were the crabbed banksias making aggressive statements on a few front lawns. The houses faced each other across the firmly kerbed and guttered bitumen as if trying to pretend that the dangerous blue-grey wilderness that stretched for kilometres around them didn’t exist.

  As she drove slowly by Number 15, Holly thought she could have picked it as Trevor Purse’s house even without the white numbers on the letterbox. In a street of well-kept houses, it was the neatest. A prim little construction of light-coloured brick with a modestly low-pitched green-tiled roof, its most prominent feature was the fawn aluminium roller shutter that closed off the garage built in to one side. Its frontage featured a low brick fence, a weeping standard cherry tree in brilliant autumn colour and a row of rigidly controlled roses. Not a single fallen leaf marred the perfection of its impeccably trimmed square of grass, its ruler-straight driveway, or the paved area in front of the house.

  The driveway gates were standing open, but Holly had no fears that her quarry had already left. A white Mazda, the twin of her own vehicle except that it was very clean, stood in the shelter of a carport that snuggled beside the garage like a poor relation.

  A few doors down, Holly did a sedate U-turn and parked on the other side of the street where she had a clear view of Number 15. It was only ten-thirty-five, but having successfully found the house she felt it would be tempting fate to leave it, even in the interests of discretion.

  After a couple of minutes, however, she began to feel conspicuous. No one appeared to be watching her, but there was something about Wattle Crescent that gave the impression of eyes peering from behind curtains and between the slats of Venetian blinds. When a black four-wheel drive cruised past, she felt certain that the driver had glanced at h
er with more than casual interest. Hastily she took out O’Brien’s mobile phone and held it to her ear, nodding and moving her mouth occasionally to reinforce the charade.

  As time crawled by, Holly’s eyes remained fixed on the front door of Number 15 Wattle Crescent while her mind wandered back to the mansion in Medlow Bath.

  Cliff Allnut’s BMW had still been parked outside when she had hurried through the opening gates, but of Allnut himself there had been no sign. Presumably he had gone around to the back of the house. Maybe, Holly thought uncomfortably, he was pumping Eric and Sheena about her. By now Eric had probably given him the Mealey Marshes address. Eric obviously didn’t like Allnut, but at the moment he wasn’t keen on Holly, the promise-breaker, either.

  Maybe Allnut was even now making calls, trying to get information on a private investigator called Cage who was based in Mealey Marshes. Or maybe he had finally made contact with the real estate agents who had handled the rentals of Andrew’s house and office. Holly wondered what Len Land and Oriana Spillnek would tell him. Everything, probably. Neither of them had any reason to prevaricate. She wondered if their descriptions of Holly Love, Andrew’s abandoned fiancée, would finally lead Allnut to suspect who Una’s protector, Cage PI, really was. What if he asked Land, Spillnek or even Mrs Wigg the taxi driver to come to Horsetrough Lane, to lie in wait for Holly’s return and unmask her? What if he called the police?

  The envelope containing Una Maggott’s money was still in Holly’s shoulder bag. Certainly, the resignation letter was folded with it—which was why Holly had balked at giving the envelope to Una before she left—but that proved nothing, really. Holly could be carrying it merely as a safety measure, with no intention of handing it over unless she was challenged.

  She caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye and her stomach lurched as she saw the fawn roller shutter of Number 15 rising like a curtain opening at the beginning of a play. No one had come out the front door. Apparently the garage could be accessed from the house.