There was a roar outside as the four-wheel drive started up. Fen’s lip twitched. He turned and ran.
23
Holly stared at the empty doorway, listening to the sound of the four-wheel drive bellowing and spraying gravel as it reversed through the gates. People were chattering around her and saying her name, but she didn’t seem to be able to respond. Her mind was curiously blank.
Slowly she turned away from the door. The room seemed to have begun moving around her. It was as if she were standing in the centre of some weird homemade merry-go-round that featured furniture instead of swans and white horses. Interesting, she thought dreamily, watching the table with Una at its head sail by, closely followed by Mrs Moss and the sideboard.
She heard an exclamation, and felt movement beside her. An arm was wrapped around her shoulders. The arm was strong and reassuring, so Holly leaned into it and closed her eyes. The next moment she was sitting in a chair. The room was buzzing with voices, but a man was talking quietly to her, close to her ear, telling her to put her head down. Holly thought she might as well do it. She felt very tired.
‘That’s it,’ the man said. ‘You’ll be right.’
Martin, Holly thought. Martin the ute driver. Martin of the bright blue eyes, who talked easily to Sheena and joked with the woman in the cake shop, but didn’t care for Holly Love.
‘Poor little thing! What a terrible ordeal!’ That was Mrs Moss.
‘Terrible ordeal indeed! What about my wife?’ That thin, chirping voice was familiar too. Holly couldn’t put a name to it, just at the moment, but it made her think of crickets and . . . bedbugs. She shivered.
‘Relax,’ Martin murmured, squeezing her shoulder. ‘It’s all over.’
‘It certainly is not over!’ the chirping voice objected. ‘Not as far as I’m concerned. This woman led those criminals to that bug-ridden motel and put my wife in danger of her life!’
‘Now, Trevor, that’s very unfair!’ Mrs Moss exclaimed.
Trevor Purse, Holly thought, memory clicking back into place. He and Mrs Moss must have got onto first name terms while duct-taped to the light post.
She was feeling more herself now, but she didn’t want to raise her head. The tabletop was cool and smooth on her forehead. Martin’s hand on her shoulder was comforting. And she wasn’t ready to face anyone yet—especially Una Maggott.
‘Holly had no idea those crims were shadowing her, did she?’ Mrs Moss argued. ‘As the smelly one said, it was all a balls-up. It could happen to anyone!’
I doubt that, Holly thought glumly, and slowly she made herself sit up straight. She couldn’t leave her defence to Mrs Moss. This was her mess and she had to deal with it. As she had feared, the moment she moved Martin’s hand slipped from her shoulder. She felt sad about that, but it couldn’t be helped.
She had braced herself to face Una, but Una was no longer sitting at the head of the table. No one was sitting at the table except Holly. More time had passed than she had realised, it seemed. Eric, wearing bright pink polythene gloves that contrasted oddly with his shimmering jumpsuit, was sweeping up the maggots on the tabletop with a dustpan and brush and tipping them into a bulging supermarket bag that presumably already contained the rat. The padded envelope and the absurd threatening letter had gone.
A glass of water appeared in front of Holly, held firmly in a capable freckled hand. She turned a little, saw Sheena bending towards her, and recoiled, pressing her lips together and shaking her head.
‘Let me,’ she heard Abigail say.
Expressionless, Sheena withdrew. Then it was Abigail offering the glass, and this time Holly drank.
‘Thanks,’ she said. She looked up into Abigail’s shadowed eyes and her scalp prickled.
‘It isn’t the rat,’ Abigail murmured, her lips barely moving. ‘The feeling’s too strong. Much too strong. It’s human. Secret. Hidden. In this house.’
A memory flowed into Holly’s mind—the memory of Abigail standing in Reenie Halliday’s hallway, clutching a cat’s brush and saying: ‘He’s here.’ She remembered how disbelieving she had felt then—and how wrong she’d been. She remembered the question she had almost blurted out afterwards as she and Abigail drove up Stillwaters Road, just before they saw Mrs Moss and Lawrence gobbling hot chips outside the bookshop. It wasn’t quite so easy to ask the question now. Now she was more fearful about what the result might be. But she asked it anyway. How could she not?
‘Could you find it, Abigail? Would you try?’
Abigail took a quick breath, nodded, and turned away.
‘And don’t forget, Trevor,’ Mrs Moss was saying. ‘Mrs Purse put herself in danger the second time. The goon with the knife would never have got her if she’d stayed in the bush with us, instead of bolting into the house to find you as soon as she saw that the door was open. And Holly let herself be taken as a hostage in place of her. That was very brave!’
‘Be that as it may, I would never have hired the woman if I’d known she wasn’t a professional!’ said Trevor Purse hotly. ‘I’ll be reporting her to the police the moment they get here. She took my money under false pretences.’
‘Don’t know where the false pretences come in,’ drawled Eric, straightening up with the rat bag dangling from one pink finger. ‘Miz Cage did what you paid her for, didn’t she? Followed your lady to the mo-tel? Reported back? That’s what you said when Martin flagged you down on the highway and told you where to turn off.’
‘That’s right!’ cried Mrs Moss.
‘Well—yes, yes, I suppose so,’ Purse spluttered. ‘But the point is, the first thing I saw when I got to that motel was Leanne being driven away by two—’
‘And whose fault was that?’ cried a high, trembling voice that Holly didn’t recognise.
She turned to look. Just in front of the doorway, Leanne Purse, chubby and bloodstained, was facing her husband, spitting like an angry kitten. Trevor himself was looking astounded. His curved arm was hanging foolishly in the air, as if Leanne had just torn herself away from his embrace.
‘It was your fault!’ Leanne almost screamed. ‘Your fault, Trevor Purse!’
‘My fault!’ her husband gasped.
‘Yes!’ Leanne stamped her foot. ‘None of this would have happened if I hadn’t run out of the motel like a madwoman the second that man who was robbed gave the alarm! And I only did that because of you! I was terrified of getting mixed up with the police, so you’d find out I’d taken on one of Petula’s shifts.’
Trevor recovered himself enough to manage a fussy little frown. ‘Yes, well, Leanne, you know how I feel about my wife working, let alone working as a cleaner at a—’
‘And what’s more,’ Leanne raged on, ‘those criminals wouldn’t have even been at the motel if you hadn’t hired a detective to spy on me—me, your own wife!’
Trevor went red to the roots of his scanty hair. ‘I—I was worried,’ he stammered. ‘I was out of my mind with worry, Leanne!’
Leanne tossed her head, burst into tears, and stormed past him, out of the room. Trevor spun round to go after her, his face crumpled in dismay.
‘If I were you, I’d get her home, Trevor,’ Mrs Moss advised. ‘I really don’t think it would be wise for either of you to speak to the police. The story would be bound to get into the Gazette and it doesn’t reflect very well on you, really.’
Trevor stopped in mid-stride and turned around, his eyes bulging.
‘We won’t say anything,’ Mrs Moss said reassuringly. ‘Your secret is safe with us. Isn’t it, Holly?’
Holly swallowed, and nodded.
‘They took the Mazda keys,’ croaked Purse. ‘And the van will have to be towed. It’s—’
‘Oh, I’m sure our friend here can hot-wire the Mazda for you, Trevor,’ Mrs Moss said, smiling at Eric with little-old-lady confidence. ‘He knows all about cars. He was Mr Maggott’s chauffeur, you know.’
‘Eric’s got his hands full. I’ll do it.’
Holly turned and saw
Martin easing himself away from the bookshelf. She hadn’t realised he was still in the room. She’d assumed he’d left with Sheena. She was absurdly glad that he hadn’t.
‘You are kind,’ said Mrs Moss, beaming.
With a little wail of thanks, Trevor Purse departed in pursuit of his wife.
‘That was neat,’ Martin commented, as he went by Holly’s chair. ‘But Purse was the least of your worries. Una’s gone to ring Allnut. Feel like a bit of fresh air?’
Holly shook her head. ‘I’m okay.’
He looked at her quizzically. ‘If you change your mind, the ute’s parked in the lay-by,’ he remarked, and followed Trevor.
Holly stared after him.
‘I think he’s suggesting that we should split, dear,’ whispered Mrs Moss. ‘He’s offering to help us make our getaway. It will be a squeeze in that truck, but it might be best.’
‘No.’ Holly shook her head again. ‘I’ve got to talk to Una.’ She stood up and took Abigail’s arm. It was quivering as if something were buzzing inside it.
‘But the fuzz will be here any minute,’ said Mrs Moss. ‘In fact, I can’t understand why they aren’t here already. It’s disgraceful, really. For all they know we’re lying here wallowing in our own blood!’
‘Oh, Enid, don’t!’ Abigail shuddered.
‘Oh, sorry, dear.’ Mrs Moss tapped her lips as if to reprove herself and noticed Eric was staring. ‘Abby saw blood when we came into the house, you see,’ she told him brightly. ‘Blood and death. She thought it was Holly’s.’
‘I was sure it was Holly’s!’ said Abigail.
‘Well, it wasn’t, was it?’ Mrs Moss soothed. ‘Holly’s here, alive and well. I was just saying that it’s very bad of the police—’
‘The cops never got called,’ said Eric, clearly glad of the chance to steer the conversation onto more normal lines. ‘When Martin saw Miz Cage grabbed in Mealey he thought it was just a sort of . . . pro-fessional disagreement. You know?’
‘What?’ Holly gaped at him.
‘Like, you’d double-crossed your co-lleagues, or something?’ said Eric, slouching to the door with the dustpan, brush and noxious bag held well out in front of him. ‘We both saw the four-wheel drive tailing you yesterday. Martin saw it come with you into Mealey Marshes. I saw it following us here. Never occurred to us you didn’t know. It was pretty obvious.’
‘I just thought there were a lot of black four-wheel drives around.’ Holly shook her head. It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so deeply embarrassing.
‘Yeah, well, our mistake,’ said Eric, leading the way into the entrance hall. ‘But the way we saw it, cops would’ve just complicated things, so we thought we’d handle it ourselves. We didn’t know about the guns then, o’ course. Or Miz Purse. Or the psycho-path.’
‘I see,’ Holly said weakly. ‘Well . . . thanks for the thought.’
She heard the sound of the Mazda starting up. Martin had wasted no time in getting the Purses on their way. But as Eric had said, the Purses were really the least of her worries.
Eric glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘Miz M still thinks the cops are going to turn up, but she’ll twig sooner or later and put in a call. And Allnut will be here soon. Just slip out and get down to the lay-by. I’ll cover for you.’
‘Well, Eric, at least that establishes where your loyalties lie,’ a voice rasped from the other side of the hall.
Una Maggott appeared in the doorway of her room. Her eyes were blazing. Andrew’s mobile phone and the box of teaspoons rested on her knees. Behind her, the python slid behind glass.
Eric swore under his breath. At the same moment, Sheena emerged from the back of the house, carrying a tea tray. Seeing the confrontation, she halted, her eyes wary. Outside, a car horn tooted and there was the screech of tyres on bitumen, but no one looked around.
‘You can get out, Eric,’ Una said coldly. ‘Now. And you can take your snake and the hearse with you!’
‘But I’ve got nowhere to keep them!’ Eric protested, looking panic-stricken. ‘You know I haven’t!’
‘You should have thought of that before you decided to transfer your loyalties to Ms Cage, or whatever her name is,’ Una spat, wheeling herself further into the hall. ‘I want you out, and I’m not bound to give house room to your property.’
Eric was white to the lips. ‘You can’t do this,’ he said. ‘Not with no warning. Cleopatra and the hearse were Mr M’s most—’
‘Prized possessions,’ sneered Una Maggott. ‘Yes. So the will said. That’s why he left them to you, isn’t it?’
She looked at the smirking portrait on the wall and her face darkened. ‘Just as he left every stick of furniture, every pot and pan, every portable object in my house, to Sheena.’
‘It was all he could leave me, Una!’ Sheena exclaimed, her knuckles whitening on the handles of the tray. ‘By the end it was all he had, except for the pension!’
‘Keep out of this!’ Una said, without looking around. ‘This has nothing to do with you. You got what you could out of me, then stayed on while it suited you, and gave notice when it suited you. And now Eric is leaving too. Well, good riddance! Good riddance to both of you!’
She faced Eric with her chin jutting out, her lips set. She was icy. Hateful. Or so Holly would have thought if she hadn’t glimpsed, beneath that bitter mask, the face of the girl in the old snapshot—the girl who had grown up to lose her mother, her father and her home in a single year, and decided that trust led only to pain. The girl who had eventually transformed herself into La Dragonne, and ended up old, crippled and alone.
‘Ms Maggott, Eric knows I didn’t mean you any harm,’ Holly said. ‘That’s the only reason he—’
‘Don’t speak to me, girl!’ Una rasped. ‘Save your lies for the police.’ She glanced through the open front door. ‘Ah, there you are, Allnut!’ she called. ‘Just in time, for a change.’
Cliff Allnut, red and startled-looking but impeccable in his natty golfing gear, was hurrying over the churned-up gravel. Dulcie, Sebastian and Lily, having finally decided it was safe to emerge from hiding, were trailing after him, all looking as if they had been rolling in a compost heap.
The gang’s all here, Holly thought, and felt a bubble of laughter rise from her chest to her throat where it stuck and burned.
‘What’s been happening here?’ Allnut panted, nimbly skirting the abandoned green van and jogging up the steps to the verandah. ‘A madman in a white car just nearly ran me down! What’s this about gangsters? Dulcie says the Cage woman—’
‘I finally got the house searched, Allnut!’ Una crowed. ‘We found the spoons! And Andrew’s bag! We also found out that it was the boy who stole Dulcie’s money. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!’
Allnut stopped dead. His mouth fell open. Behind him, Dulcie made an incomprehensible gobbling sound.
‘Now try telling the police I should be locked up!’ Una shouted, picking up the blue box and shaking it at him. ‘Now try telling them I’m senile, Allnut! I’ve got my proof. There’ll be sniffer dogs here before you know it.’
Well, it was now or never. Holly took a small step forward, pulling Abigail with her.
‘You don’t need to wait for a sniffer dog, Una,’ she said. ‘If Andrew’s body is here, Abigail can find it.’
Una’s lip curled. ‘Oh, yes,’ she jeered. ‘Eric told me you shared your office with a mind-reader. He thought it would put me off you, no doubt, but I was desperate enough to think it didn’t matter. So this is her, is it? And you’re offering her services? In return for not prosecuting you for swindling me out of my money, I suppose.’
‘What?’ Allnut suddenly looked alert and ten times more intelligent, as if the word ‘money’ had activated a light switch in his brain. He strode into the hall.
‘This is absurd!’ cried Dulcie, dodging and weaving to get a clear view around him. ‘Una, you can’t possibly—’
‘Keep quiet!’ Una snapped. ‘Well, Ms Lo
ve?’
A satisfyingly sharp, pious retort along the lines of: No strings, Ms Maggott—I only want to find out the truth flashed across Holly’s mind, but she dismissed it. No point in cutting off your nose to spite your face, as her mother always said. Still, her spirit revolted against the idea of using Abigail as a bargaining chip. She thought of a dignified compromise and seized on it.
‘I’m not asking for any promises,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘I’m just asking you to keep an open mind for now. About me—and about Eric as well. That’s all.’
‘How generous!’ Una was still sneering.
Holly heard Eric suppress a sigh. She glanced at Abigail and her heart quailed. Abigail was looking far from impressive. Her emerald green dress and purple scarf looked garish and tawdry in these surroundings. She still had leaves in her plainly dyed hair. Her eyes no longer looked dramatically haunted, but rather vacant and confused. She was, in fact, the very picture of a middle-aged charlatan who had floundered way out of her depth.
Beside her, Mrs Moss teetered on her high heels, looking rather wistfully towards the front door. Holly looked too and saw Martin leaning against the doorjamb, exactly as he had done the day before when he came to report on the fenceline. Meeting her eyes, he shrugged slightly: Well, I offered. Too late now.
‘So what does your tame mind-reader have to tell us from beyond, Ms Love?’ Una enquired nastily. ‘Can she speak for herself? So far she’s done nothing but stare into space. Is that part of the act? If so—’
‘The chandelier fell,’ Abigail suddenly declared in a hollow voice. ‘It was huge. Glittering. It fell—here, where I’m standing now.’ She shivered all over.
‘Oh, spare us,’ Sheena muttered.
Lily laughed derisively.
But Una had sat up, her face as shocked as if she’d just been slapped.
‘Don’t be taken in, Una,’ Cliff Allnut said with contempt. ‘This is how these people work. Any fool can see there was a chandelier here once. The chains are still hanging from the ceiling!’
Love, Honour & O'Brien Page 26