Murder at the Altar

by Veronica Heley

  Yet to get this matter sorted, she must leave the house. Who could she trust to house-sit for her?

  She rang John at the charity shop, hoping he might have gone in to get some books sorted. Thankfully, he was there and willing to house-sit for a while.

  He wanted to discuss the matter of her returning to work at the shop but she couldn’t be bothered with that just at the moment. By the time he arrived, she had the house warm and some coffee and biscuits ready for him.

  He goggled at the For Sale sign just as she had done. She really didn’t like having to expose Diana’s little plans to strangers, but in this case it had to be done. John exclaimed with horror, with sympathy, and settled down with the papers to guard the house.

  ‘Bolt the front door behind me and if anyone comes from Jolleys, tell them I’m at the shop, sorting it out … and don’t let any fake water, gas or electricity men in while I’m gone, will you? I think there’s one hanging around this area.’

  ‘Trust me!’ said John. He drove the front door bolt to behind her as she stepped out into the rain.

  Jolleys, THE Neighbourhood Estate Agents, was across the road from the charity shop, near Sunflowers café. The café looked bright and welcoming on this murky November day. Ellie could see Chloe flitting about inside. Was that her new boyfriend sitting at a table in the window? Mrs Dawes had seemed surprised that Chloe had taken him to church. Fleetingly, Ellie wondered why.

  She had something more important to deal with now. Jolleys looked prosperous. There were three desks inside. Solid, impressive-looking desks, staffed by two middle-aged women, and a balding, smiling, rubicund man who Ellie supposed must be Mr Jolley himself.

  There was a client with him. A nervous-looking young man probably trying to find something within his means to rent.

  ‘May I help you?’ One of the middle-aged women.

  ‘Thank you. I’m here to see Mr Jolley himself.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment? I’m afraid he’s busy all morning. Perhaps I—’

  ‘My name is Mrs Quicke, and I think,’said Ellie rather more loudly than was usual with her, ‘that Mr Jolley would prefer to deal with this rather delicate matter himself. Now. At once.’

  Mr Jolley looked up, recognizing trouble when he saw it. He frowned, looked impatient. Then slightly bewildered. Lastly, cautious. He waved the man he’d been interviewing to an assistant’s desk.

  Ellie seated herself in front of him and said, ‘Mr Jolley, you’ve put a For Sale sign up outside my house.’

  He treated her to a fat smile. ‘Ah, Mrs Quicke. Sorry to hear you’re leaving us, but you’ll be delighted to hear that there’s a lot of interest. In fact, one of my assistants will be showing two couples around this morning.’

  ‘On whose authority? I have not asked you to put the house on the market. I was astounded to see the For Sale sign up this morning.’

  Mr Jolley began to perspire. ‘We were instructed by your daughter. It is all perfectly in order—’

  ‘No, it isn’t. The house is mine, not hers. And I have no intention of moving.’

  ‘But we understood—’

  ‘You were … misled. I must ask you to have that sign taken down immediately. Today. And I believe you have a set of keys belonging to me? I want them back.’

  ‘But … we understood that you needed a quick sale, that you are negotiating for a small flat near your daughter …’

  ‘… and you didn’t check with me first?’

  ‘We understood that your daughter already has title to half the house, and that you were not well … unable to look after yourself …’

  Ellie thought she had been keeping her anger under control, but now she let it slip. ‘You were misinformed. Check with Bill Weatherspoon if you wish. Do I look as if I were senile and ready for a nursing home?’

  ‘Er, no.’ He scrabbled unhappily in a file at his elbow. ‘Our instructions were signed, all in proper form … the photographer has been asked to take the usual … we have even booked a quarter-page advertisement in—’

  ‘Then you’ll have to unbook it, won’t you?’

  His colour, which had been unhealthily high, began to fade. He thrust a form at her, on which Diana’s signature was prominent. ‘We acted perfectly legally. Your daughter was very clear that she owns half the house. I will of course check with Mr Weatherspoon, but … you must understand that we acted throughout in good faith … we have incurred various expenditures …’

  ‘Send the account to my daughter. I am certainly not responsible for it!’

  She stood up. ‘My keys, please.’

  ‘I’m afraid that they are with my assistant, who is even now taking someone round …’

  ‘I expect he has a mobile phone. Ring him. Get him back here. Return my keys, and we’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘He may already be showing someone round the house. It’s a prime property. Selling this would give you a nice bit of capital. You could afford to buy something really exclusive with the money …’

  ‘You underestimate me, Mr Jolley. A neighbour is house-sitting for me at the moment and he will not be letting anyone in during my absence. Please ring your man and get my keys back.’

  He caved in, as bullies always do. ‘Of course. Please take a seat.’

  He’s a smarmy git, if ever there was one, thought Ellie. She was surprised at herself for even thinking such a thing. Her anger was cooling to a leaden dullness. She hated this. That her own daughter could do this to her …!

  Then she thought of something really sneaky, but potentially helpful.

  14

  Mr Jolley was fast recovering his usual smiling demeanour. ‘My assistant will be a few minutes, Mrs Quicke. Would you care for a cup of coffee while you wait?’

  The pale young man had left. Another client had arrived. Bent on smoothing Ellie down, Mr Jolley signalled that one of his assistants should deal with him. Ellie was prepared to be smoothed.

  She said conversationally, ‘It might be just as well if you did check with Mr Weatherspoon about the ownership of certain properties. The house presently occupied by my late husband’s aunt, for instance …’

  His eyes began to bulge. ‘Miss Quicke?’ ‘It is possible that I may be putting that house on the market. What do you think it would fetch?’

  He gobbled, perspired and mopped. His voice came out as a squeak. ‘You … you own that house? But …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ellie with a stony smile. ‘I own that house, too. I haven’t really thought about what I shall do with it, yet. It would cut up into several nice flats, wouldn’t it? Or perhaps a developer would be interested, because there is almost an acre of garden attached. How many town houses do you think we could get on that piece of land?’

  Mr Jolley appeared to have lost his voice completely.

  The coffee came. Ellie sugared it, and sipped. Really good coffee. A man who knew what his customers liked, Mr Jolley. Now did he care more about managing the flats for Aunt Drusilla, or about handling the sale of the big house? Which would bring him more money and kudos? Ellie rather hoped he’d be loyal to Aunt Drusilla, having worked for her, presumably, for a good many years. The degree of his loyalty might rather depend, Ellie thought, on how many flats she owned and he managed.

  He smiled, revealing teeth far too even and white to be natural. ‘Well, well. You have come to the right person, haven’t you? Now that our little misunderstanding is out of the way, we can look forward to a splendidly rewarding relationship …’

  Two flats only, thought Ellie.

  ‘… and if you would just like to give me time to check … perhaps by tomorrow … and then, I can save you waiting here, bring your keys round to you myself, just to show there’s no hard feelings, ha ha!’

  I underestimated him, thought Ellie. The man is going to back-pedal, check with Aunt Drusilla, who when all is said and done must have brought a lot of work to him over the years … and maybe it’s four or five flats … and then try to smarm me into
forgetting his sharp practice. Because he was just that little bit too eager to fall in with Diana’s wishes on this one, wasn’t he? Just a little too quick off the mark with his For Sale board and camera and adverts.

  She adhered to her seat, although he had risen to his feet obviously trying to get rid of her. ‘I’m in no hurry,’ she said. ‘I only have to call in at the police station after this …’

  He sat down, abruptly, his colour fading again. ‘You’re going to involve the police in this … this stupid little misunderstanding?’

  Ellie gave him a limpid smile. ‘Why should you think that? If you will give me the original of the form with Diana’s signature on it – keeping a photocopy for yourself, of course – then I shall certainly not be mentioning the matter to the police. For the moment.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ He was perspiring again. It had been only a guess on Ellie’s part that he had known the truth about the ownership of her house before he took it on. Or maybe he had had his suspicions but stifled them. Either way, he was going to give her the weapon she needed to checkmate Diana.

  Oh dear. How horridly businesslike she was being today. And tough! She hadn’t thought she could ever outface a man like this.

  A young man burst into the office, looking thunderous. He was carrying a clipboard and flourishing a set of keys. Ellie recognized Diana’s owl keyring.

  ‘What’s going on? I couldn’t get into the house. The front door was bolted and the back door, too. Did you send me to the wrong house? The client’s furious. Loved the area, loved the house, was prepared to go the asking price, subject to a survey, of course.’

  Mr Jolley had been making shushing noises, but the young man was too angry to care.

  Ellie said with saccharine sweetness, ‘Oh, you poor thing. Mr Jolley sent you on a fool’s errand, I’m afraid. Are those my keys? Thank you. And the form – yes, yes, with my daughter’s signature on it. Splendid. And Mr Jolley, I shall think over what you said about the big house. Quite a large development, I agree. A real goldmine. Good day …’

  Ellie swept out into the street, got herself round to the Sunflowers café, and sat down to have a good laugh. A laugh which was also nearly a cry.

  How could Diana have done that to her? She ordered coffee, used the café’s public phone to tell John that the crisis was over, and that he had been perfectly splendid, repelling boarders for her.

  She was surprised to hear that the fake gasman had been back again. John had carefully watched where he went after trying to get into her house, and the man had gone off to sit in a green Saab, registration number unknown. Definitely not a gas board van. Had John rung the gas board? And the police? He had? Good. You couldn’t be too careful nowadays, could you?

  She owed him a meal, if he cared to join her at the café for lunch.

  Fancy that! she thought. Frank not dead three weeks, and I’m inviting another man to have lunch with me!

  The errand boy was reporting on his mobile. ‘Yeah, she’s back all right. The For Sale sign is still up, so she’s probably not going to be around much longer … yeah, yeah. Even one day’s too long, and yeah, I understand we can’t afford to take any chances. Well, she’s up at the shops now … Yeah, I did try the gas trick but she’d got a minder in the house and he wouldn’t let me in. Some retired colonel type. Threatened to ring the police. Don’t know if he will, but he looks the sort that might. So we’ll forget the gas. I’ve got the Saab with me today. She’s in the caff. Broad pavements, double yellow lines. I can knock her over easy peasy, especially in this weather when they’re all keeping their heads down …’

  Chloe brought Ellie a coffee which she didn’t really want after all the coffee she’d been drinking that day. She tried to lift the cup to her lips and found her hand was shaking so much that she had to put it down again. She clenched her teeth, trying to still the shivers.

  She’d been through too much lately, that was the trouble. Any little thing set her weeping like a baby. Not that she was going to weep now. No. She sniffed, found a hankie and blew her nose. No. The woman who had outfaced Mr Jolley and retrieved Diana’s set of keys, was not one to be overthrown by the shakes.

  Definitely not.

  She would just sit there till she felt better. When John came they would have lunch together, and then she would think about what she ought to do next.

  She wouldn’t be able to ring Diana till the evening. She had a horrid feeling that Diana and Stewart might have got themselves into debt by moving into that big house. Especially since Diana had only been able to get a part-time job. Perhaps she ought to help them out. Perhaps it had been mean of her not to pay the estate agent’s expense bill.

  But no. Diana ought not to have done it. Not any of it. She ought not to have chosen such a big house when her father had only given her enough for them to afford the mortgage on a smaller one. Diana ought not to have been greedy.

  Well … she had always been a greedy child, wanting more than her fair share of whatever was going. Perhaps it was time for her to face up to the realities of life. Buying what you can’t pay for equals misery. See Mr Micawber.

  But she could afford to bail them out.

  Would that be a good idea? Considering how Diana had just tried to bully her into a move she didn’t want? Ellie supposed Diana’s idea was that selling the house and having her mother move into a rented flat would release a lump of capital, which Ellie could easily be persuaded to pass over to her daughter. Or half of it, at any rate.

  Ellie sighed. No, it wouldn’t be a good idea to bail Diana out. It was never a good idea to give in to bullying. Or emotional blackmail. Diana would just go on and on and …

  Well, what would Frank have done?

  Frank had been furious with Diana buying that big house. He had made it clear in his will that he didn’t want her to have any more of his money for the time being. He was, of course, old-fashioned in some ways. But very sound.

  John swept through the door of the café, shaking out his umbrella. ‘I don’t know which is worse, the snow or the slush or the rain!’

  He kissed Ellie’s cheek and, rubbing cold hands together, sat down beside her. He looked, she thought, like a knight of old, having vanquished dragons for the sake of his fair lady.

  ‘Dear John, what will you have? Chloe recommends the beef stew. She says, “It’s called some foreign name on the menu, but that is what it is.” Complete with dumplings. I can’t remember when I last had dumplings, but it’s certainly the weather for it.’

  ‘Two beef stews it is, then,’ said John. He drew his chair up closer to Ellie. ‘I rang the gas board and they said they hadn’t had any leak reported in our area. What’s more, they don’t employ a man answering to his description. They said we should phone the police, so I did. The police said they’d want to speak to you about it, too, because you saw the man yesterday and someone less clued up might easily let the man in. I dread to think what might happen next. At the least, some old age pensioner might lose their savings.’

  ‘I have to call in at the incident room, anyway,’ said Ellie, leaning back for Chloe to lay the table.

  Chloe was wearing a bright green streak in her hair today, with matching emerald T-shirt under a black blouse. Jeans, of course. Colourful.

  Chloe said, ‘Excuse me, but did you say you wanted to talk to the police? If you wait a bit, my boyfriend will be in about two and he could maybe fix it for you, whatever it is.’

  Ellie’s mind swivelled back to the face of the man she’d seen beside Chloe at church the day before. ‘He’s a policeman at the local station?’

  ‘Just joined recently,’ said Chloe complacently. ‘He’s not as thick as he looks, but he’s got a long way to go yet, so if you’ve got something that he can deal with … it’ll give him some brownie points and save you a trip to the nick. Anything to drink today?’

  ‘Tea please, later.’

  Chloe removed herself.

  ‘She’s got something there,’ said Elli
e to John. ‘The incident room gives me the horrors. I suppose it’s the contrast between knowing what usually goes on in the church hall, and what’s there now.’

  ‘Pictures of Enid Blyton’s Noddy on the wall, looking down on real-life policemen?’

  ‘I’d forgotten how terribly shabby it is in there. No wonder the vicar wants to rebuild. As for the police, they all treat me as if I’m just a silly woman reporting a missing cat.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a cat.’

  ‘I might get one just to be able to report it missing, and cause them maximum aggro.’

  John laughed. ‘Bravo, Ellie. Don’t let them grind you down.’

  ‘No way!’ said Ellie, smiling. ‘John, I really appreciate what you did this morning. I made Mr Jolley eat his words and I got my keys back. Now I suppose I have to face Diana with what she’s done.’ And wasn’t that a depressing thought!

  Chloe brought two steaming platefuls of rich, spicy stew with dumplings, carrots and mashed potatoes. John almost crowed with delight. ‘Wait till I tell my wife about this. Although she’ll probably say it’s bad for my cholesterol.’

  ‘I have come to the conclusion,’ said Ellie, speaking through a mouthful of dumpling soaked in gravy, ‘that every now and then we ought deliberately to try something new and possibly risky. Just to keep our minds bright.’

  ‘As if you needed it!’

  ‘Oh, I do. Or rather, I did. You’ve no idea what a scared little mouse I am, really.’

  ‘It doesn’t show.’

  ‘John, you are sweet. Of course it showed. Why else did I let other people dictate the course of my life for me?’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’ She thought, John is a sweet old so-and-so, but he hasn’t a clue what I’m on about. She also thought, I’m eating this too quickly. I’ll get indigestion. But I don’t care.

  John put his knife and fork together on his empty plate. Really, he’d eaten that even faster than her! Just like a Hoover.

  ‘Ellie, we do need to talk. Last Friday, when we heard that there’d been a fire in your road and that you’d been taken off to hospital, Madam said she was going round to see you when you came out. Rose and I suggested getting some flowers for you. Madam said we could do what we liked, but she didn’t think it appropriate seeing how little you’d been contributing to the running of the shop these last few weeks.