O’Brien was right all along, Holly thought soberly. In the end, Andrew’s and my wonderful, romantic affair came down to his stealing my money, and my trying to get it back. O’Brien himself wasn’t ever really on my side—he only promised to help me because there was money in it for him. Skinner and his thugs were willing to kidnap two people and raid the Maggott house because of money. Leanne Purse deceived Trevor because he worried so much about money. And money had been at the root of all Una’s problems. Bloodsuckers . . .
Eric’s low, contemptuous voice seemed to echo in Holly’s ears: It wouldn’t matter if she didn’t have so much bloody money.If she was like her old man and didn’t have a bean Dulcie and co wouldn’t give a stuff about what she did . . .
Andrew, Dulcie, Lily, Allnut—they had all battened onto Una because she was rich. And no doubt Sebastian, Una’s guide in her latest craze, was out for all he could get.
Eric probably didn’t class himself or Sheena in the bloodsucker category, but the fact was, protective of Una as he claimed to be, Eric only went on working for her because he didn’t have enough money to house his snake and his hearse elsewhere. Sheena had gladly sold her entire inheritance from fond, foolish old Rollo Maggott to his daughter in return for a ‘little nest egg’ . . .
And suddenly, Holly’s stomach dropped as if she were in a plane that had hit an air pocket. The world seemed to be spinning around her—not slowly like a merry-go-round this time, but as fast as a ride she had once been sick on at Luna Park. She gripped the table with her free hand for balance, carefully put down her coffee cup and stood up.
‘Good heavens, Holly, what is it?’ cried Mrs Moss in alarm. ‘You look awful! Do you feel faint, dear? Have you got a pain?’
But Holly was looking at Abigail. ‘You told me the night before last. When you read the cards. You said you saw secrets and lies around me. Secrets, lies, shadows . . . and a snake. You told me to trust my instincts.’
Her mouth full of sweet almond pastry, her eyes wide, Abigail nodded dumbly.
‘There was a man upside-down, too,’ Holly said. She began groping in her shoulder bag.
‘This is our treat, dear,’ said Mrs Moss nervously. ‘Abby, I really think we should get Holly back—’
Holly’s fingers closed on her car keys. She pulled them out. ‘I’m all right,’ she said, backing away from the table. ‘Really. It’s only—everything’s just made sense. A weird kind of sense, but . . . sense. I have to go. Sorry. Thanks for the coffee.’
‘But where are you going?’ cried Mrs Moss, scrambling to her feet.
‘Back to Horsetrough Lane, I think,’ Holly heard Abigail answer for her placidly. ‘Following her instincts. Do you want to go halves on her Danish, Enid?’
The old house looked deserted. The front gates gaped wide. Trevor Purse’s van had gone from the churned gravel apron. Presumably it had already been towed away.
Holly knocked at the front door. When, after a few minutes, no one came, she retreated to the gravel and trudged around to the back, skirting the left-hand light post that still bore ragged pieces of duct-tape.
Behind a humdrum clutter of clothesline, garbage bins and garage, new lawn ran primly to the black railing fence. Beyond the fence the ground fell away, and bush-clad hills, one folding in on the other, stretched into the far distance to meet the perfect blue sky.
Not far from the corner of the house, a rectangular grid of bars set into in a metal frame was propped beside a naked window. Holly stepped up to the window and looked in. She saw a large, old-fashioned kitchen, with table, chairs, a dresser and a black fuel stove as well as a gas stove that probably also qualified as antique. The only concessions to modernity appeared to be a refrigerator, a microwave oven, a toaster and an electric jug.
A figure in jeans and T-shirt was cooking something in the microwave. Holly tapped on the windowpane. The figure turned and she saw it was Eric, almost unrecognisable in mufti. He waved and pointed to his right. Holly continued along the house until she came to the back door, which opened just as she reached it.
‘Didn’t expect you back,’ said Eric, standing aside to let her into the kitchen and closing the door behind her. ‘Thought you’d have had enough of this place. Everyone else has. They’ve all gone. The place is like a tomb.’
‘I hardly knew you without your Elvis gear,’ Holly said.
‘Yeah, well, it’s Sunday, isn’t it?’
The microwave beeped to indicate it had finished its task. Words began running along its display panel. ENJOY YOUR MEAL . . . ENJOY YOUR MEAL . . . ENJOY YOUR . . .
Eric slouched to the microwave and opened it. When he turned around again he was holding a limp rat by the tail.
Holly felt a wave of dizziness.
‘I was just defrosting this,’ Eric said. ‘Cleo’s due for a feed. Do you want to watch?’
‘Not really, thanks.’
It would be hard to think of anything Holly would like less.
Eric swung the rat between his fingers. ‘Ol’ Maggott used to give her live rats, but I persuaded him to stop.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yeah. Live feed can do snakes a lot of damage. Clawing and biting. You know.’
‘Right.’
Holly was feeling unreal again. She tore her eyes away from the rat and looked instead around the kitchen, noting the framed photographs that covered the walls. Most of the oldest were dim and foxed, but she could still make out the people in their old-fashioned clothes posed in various places around the house. Sitting at dinner in what was now the library. Promenading arm in arm on the front verandah. Standing at the bottom of the grand staircase, beneath a huge crystal chandelier.
‘There were others,’ said Eric, pointing at a few rectangular patches on the greasy cream paint. ‘They were of the outside. Una took them to show Martin what the yard looked like in the old days.’
Holly nodded. She knew she should get on with it— could almost feel the spirit of O’Brien nudging her in the ribs—but found she was strangely unwilling to take the next step. Her eyes fell on the fuel stove. One of the little black doors was slightly open, displaying a mound of white ash. Through the gap, against the white background, Holly saw a tiny gleam of red.
She moved to the stove, crouched and pulled the small door wide. She felt no excitement. She knew what she would find.
‘That old thing hasn’t been used for years,’ said Eric.
Holly reached into the space beyond the little door. Ash fell in a soft shower onto her knees as she crooked her forefinger around the handle of the red mug and pulled it free.
She stood, holding up her find for Eric to see, shaking ash from the red glaze to reveal the word ‘Andrew’ marked out in white.
‘Lordy!’ whispered Eric, abruptly back in Elvis mode. He attempted to cross himself, forgetting about the rat in his hand.
‘Well, that puts the lid on it,’ Holly said, dusting off her jeans. ‘So, Eric, where’s Una?’
26
Una Maggott was sitting at her desk in front of her computer when Holly came into the room. She looked up, her lips faintly smiling, her small eyes cold. Holly felt that atavistic repulsion, that instinctive distrust, that she had felt the very first time she saw this woman, and had suppressed so many times since.
‘So you came back,’ Una said. ‘I thought you might.’
‘I found the Andrew mug,’ said Holly, lifting her hand to display the mug.
‘So I see. A bit late, though, don’t you think?’
‘A bit late, yes. If I’d found it before I’d have smelled a rat much sooner. The fuel stove was a ridiculously obvious hiding place. Anyone searching the kitchen would have found it. And it’s inconceivable that a woman like you, however besotted, would buy a clumsy, kitschy thing like this as a gift unless there was a very good reason for it. As you told Cliff Allnut, Una, when you lie it’s a mistake to over-elaborate.’
Una’s eyes strayed back to her computer screen. ‘It’s a shame Dulcie insisted o
n taking that boy away,’ she murmured. ‘He’s a sharp one. A real Maggott. I could have used him.’
‘Like you use everyone,’ Holly said. ‘Like you used Andrew McNish. And me!’
Una shrugged. ‘McNish was in a hole and I offered him a way out of it. He knew exactly what he was doing.’
‘But I didn’t,’ said Holly.
‘Yes, well . . .’ Una’s lip curled.
Holly felt her face grow hot, and fought down her anger. ‘You even used yourself, Una, when it suited you,’ she said. ‘You told me a very personal story about seeing your father for the last time. You did it to play on my feelings. You’re good at seeing people’s weaknesses—or what you think of as weaknesses. You wanted to make me feel sorry for you, to make sure I’d keep my promise to search the house, so I’d find the things you and Andrew had planted between you to make the police believe your crazy story he’d been murdered!’
Una turned to look at her. ‘You seem to have it all worked out, Ms Cage—oh, I’m sorry, it’s Ms Love, actually, isn’t it? I still haven’t got round to talking to the police about that.’
Holly refused to be diverted by the implied threat. Una wasn’t going to go to the police.
‘I believed you completely when you told me about arguing with your dying father. You were so upset—so obviously upset. But that was because what you told me was the truth.’
‘Indeed it was.’
‘Except for one thing. The secret your father told you on his deathbed wasn’t that Lois had had a child. It was that Lois hadn’t run away thirty-five years ago, but had been killed when the chandelier fell. And that he’d embalmed her body and hidden it in this house!’
Una’s mouth twitched.
‘Just thinking about it made you angry all over again,’ Holly went on. ‘That’s why you were so convincing. As if it wasn’t bad enough that your stepmother’s body was hidden somewhere in the house you were about to take possession of at last, that dying old man told you he’d disposed of Lois as if she were an Egyptian queen, with all the treasure he thought she deserved. All the jewellery he’d heaped on her while she was alive. All the cash he’d been able to scrape together, converted to gold sovereigns. The Anubis statue, which I’ll bet is the genuine article—’
‘You surprise me, Ms Love,’ Una Maggott sneered. ‘To be able to tell a real antiquity from a cheap copy! You appear to have hidden depths.’
And the supercilious contempt in the woman’s voice was enough to make Holly throw away all thought of sparing her anything.
‘But the thing that really got under your skin, Una, was that you knew that by that time Rollo Maggott was so far gone that he thought he was talking to Sheena—Sheena who he loved, and wanted to provide for, and to whom he’d left the entire contents of this house! And you were angry, so angry, because he was rambling and confused and wouldn’t get to the point about where Lois’s body actually was, no matter how you raged at him, no matter what you did . . .’
‘Are you trying to blackmail me, Ms Love?’ Una asked curtly. ‘Because if you are, I can assure you—’
Holly felt her hands curling into fists. Deliberately she 341 relaxed them.
‘You can’t think of anything but money, can you?’ she said. ‘You can’t think of a single reason why anyone would do anything, except for money.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Because I wanted to face you with it. I wanted you to know you didn’t get away with it. I wanted you to know I know.’
It sounded feeble, when she put it into words. And suddenly all the things she’d been planning to say seemed pointless. You had to be so patient, at first. Knowing Cliff All-nut, the bequest to Sheena would have been watertight. You had to persuade Sheena to sign over her inheritance to you.And only after that was done, done by Allnut again, in exactly the same punctilious, watertight way, could you begin searching for Lois’s body and the goodies buried with it. You had the garden dug up first, and when Martin didn’t strike gold, you started clearing out the attic, the storerooms, everywhere a body could possibly be hidden. And when still nothing was found, you hired a pest exterminator to poke into all the secret holes and corners in the house.
Una was sneering at her again. ‘And what do you know, Ms Love?’
‘For one thing, I know you can’t be nearly as rich as people here think you are,’ said Holly, stung into speech. ‘If you have money to burn, why would you bother hiring a small-time detective you thought you could get cheap, then work so hard to keep her? Why are your clothes expensive, but slightly out of date? Why would you live with these—’ she gestured at the stalking gods on the walls ‘—when you obviously loathe them, and a decent paint job would cover them up?’
Una abruptly turned her chair around and wheeled herself to the window. The back of her neck was rigid. Holly felt a little rush of triumph. She knew she was right.
‘Your money was supposed to have come from shares in that company you ran with Alexis Delafont. But maybe that company wasn’t as solvent as people thought. Maybe you and Alexis took one too many risks, went a bit too close to the edge. And when he was killed it all fell in a heap.’
There was silence in the room. The Egyptian figures stalked towards the bay window. The snake’s forked tongue flickered in and out, tasting the air.
At last, Una stirred.
‘The French taxation people were vicious,’ she said, staring through the limp lace curtain, the smudgy glass, the black iron bars. ‘They took everything. I lost my Paris apartment. My shares were worthless.’
‘Then Cliff Allnut rang and told you your father was dying.’
‘Yes. The old cochon was finally on his last legs. I thanked le bon dieu, sold the last of my jewellery and came home.’ Una laughed bitterly. ‘Home! A draughty ruin in the middle of nowhere. But worth a bit of money, at least, I thought. Enough to give me a roof over my head, and some sort of income. And then, when I got here—’
‘You found out there was buried treasure in the house too.’
‘Yes!’ The voice was like a sigh. ‘The fortune everyone thought had been stolen by that little whore Lois. It was here, buried with her! All I had to do was find it. As soon as Sheena’s claim had been sorted out, I started looking.’
‘And you never told anyone what you were really doing,’ Holly said, shaking her head. ‘I suppose even you didn’t have the stomach to admit you’d tricked Sheena out of what your father meant her to have.’
‘Not till I’d secured it, anyway,’ Una said coolly. ‘Sheena was useful to me. So was Eric. And they were cheap. I wanted to hold on to them for as long as I could. I was starting to run out of money. Then I saw a television program about sniffer dogs and realised that was the answer. If I could get some trained corpse dogs into this house, they’d find the woman’s tomb for me. And it would cost me nothing.’
She swung her chair around. Holly saw that she was grinning, and felt cold fingers run down her spine.
‘They all thought I was mad, like my father,’ Una said. ‘I let them think it. What did I care, as long as I got what I wanted? Now I can sell this house and get away from here. When I’m back to somewhere civilised, I can buy as much help as I need.’
‘You are mad, Una,’ said Holly evenly. ‘Or what I call mad. No sane person would have staged a charade like you did with Andrew McNish. No sane person would invite guests into her house specifically to accuse them of murder! You even kept Lily on when you obviously despised her, to give yourself another potential suspect. And I suppose you drugged Cliff Allnut, to make sure he stayed overnight.’
‘It was just a couple of my sleeping pills. They didn’t do him any harm.’
Holly shook her head. ‘No one with any sense of reality at all would think a plan like that would work. I’m sure Andrew didn’t. He just went along with you for what he could get out of it.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Una, her face darkening. ‘What a twister that man was! He cheated me, as well as
lying about his contacts. He didn’t sprinkle blood on the bedclothes as he was supposed to do before he came down to dinner— too squeamish, I suppose, to cut himself. And he left his phone in a stupid place, where it could be brushed back by the opening door. He could have ruined everything. He nearly did!’
She leaned back in her chair, perfectly relaxed now. ‘But in the end the plan did work, Ms Love, thanks to you. I must admit it wouldn’t have occurred to me to use a psychic to locate the tomb. I’d assumed all psychics were frauds.’
‘You’re the fraud, Una!’ Holly spat, finally losing control of her temper. ‘You’re the fraud, and the user, and the snake! You accused six people of murder—including Eric, who really cares about you. You even staged a little accident to yourself to convince me there was a killer in the house. And planted a dead rat and a warning note for me, because you knew I’d react just the way I did to being threatened. How could you do it? If Andrew had left blood on the bedclothes, Eric and all the others might have been living under a shadow for the rest of their lives!’
Una snorted. ‘Now you’re lurching into melodrama, Ms Love. Andrew McNish is certain to surface sometime. He’s too cocky to do otherwise. Eric and the rest of them would have been exonerated eventually.’
‘It might have taken years—’
‘Oh, stop whining!’ Una snapped, wheeling herself back to her desk. ‘Sentiment has no place in matters of business. Now, will you please leave? I’m expecting a visitor. And you have nothing to complain of. You were paid for your services— that two hundred and fifty I gave you was the last ready cash I had.’
She turned back to the computer screen, but Holly stood her ground.
‘And what did you pay Andrew for his . . . services?’
‘It’s none of your business, but I’ll tell you if that will get rid of you. He got what he asked for—money, in the form of my mother’s rings, a new phone, and a car he’d taken a liking to, full of petrol and parked in the lay-by, ready to go.’
Her lip curled. ‘A secondhand gold Mercedes is not the vehicle I would have chosen if I wanted to disappear, but McNish is far from prudent. It’s in very good condition, apparently, according to the mechanic in Springwood who checked it over. He’s a surly type, but seems to know what he’s about. So McNish told me, anyway.’
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