I listened. She talked. And then, quite abruptly, she declared she was a little tired and wanted a nap before supper. So I set off for the walk Kate had prescribed.
Eyre House has a long and impressive front drive, covered with a thin layer of tarmac. It leads, via several curves and many potholes, to an even more impressive set of front gates. Alas, however, the road they turn into is what the Ordnance Survey maps show as white – single-track and hardly used. You have to make an effort to find the place, in other words. My taxi driver had cursed the whole of the way. Yet the Japanese Brontë-lover had found it, and so, as I discovered, had another driver.
I’d been minding my own business, walking at a moderate pace, hoping to find a path round the perimeter wall. I’d stopped to look back at the house; it was good to stand with the sun on my back – the weather had changed dramatically at about three and might well stay fine till five. I was wearing a T-shirt and lightweight jeans. If I could find a cowpat-free patch of grass, I might lie down for ten minutes and soak up some sun.
But then I felt – knew – I was not alone.
I turned casually. It would be natural to look from the house to its gates.
A large red car was parked across the gateway. A man in it; just one, as far as I could see. Not looking at a map or anything; looking down the drive. Then he put the car into gear and pulled away. A BMW, 7 Series, by the look of it. And as a cloud covered the sun and turned me for home, I wondered why the driver of such a car might want to pick his way through a narrow lane hedged with prehensile brambles to look at the distant façade of an undistinguished house. And I spent so much time puzzling that I forgot to work on George’s poem. As punishment I denied myself a cup of tea and locked myself in my little hutch to stare at a blank sheet of paper.
I sat so long that supper came as a positive relief. We gathered in the dining room wondering if we were supposed to sit where we’d sat last night, but I decided to link up with Agnes, and Courtney rapidly escaped from Nyree to join us.
We speculated in under-voices about the menu. I suggested we might get sausages in batter, Toad being one of the cooks. Agnes giggled like a thirteen-year-old.
But I was ashamed when the food did appear. The team had produced an imaginative antipasto, followed by spaghetti and two sorts of sauce – traditional Bolognese and a spicy vegetarian one. Then the pièce de résistance.
Toad’s chocolate creation – to call it a mere pudding would be to underrate it – was ambrosia. No, that would be to confuse it with something out of a tin. Manna, then. There was this wonderful crunchy topping of amaretti biscuits mixed with the darkest, bitterest continental chocolate you can imagine. Then, when you thought nothing could be more blissful, you found the chilled, sweet, creamy chocolate and rum interior.
‘People have murdered for less,’ whispered Agnes.
We ate in silence. Then the plate came round again. I helped myself and, in a belated effort to establish better relations with Gimson, offered him the plate.
‘Absolutely not,’ he said, covering his plate with a well-manicured but oddly brutal hand. ‘Lethal in at least ten different ways. Allow me to enumerate –’
‘Oh, please don’t!’ Toad gulped. ‘I never meant …’
Matt accepted another portion, but Kate declined, saying that chocolate gave her migraine.
‘All the more for the rest of us,’ said Courtney. ‘I’m sure you’d like extra,’ he said bravely to Nyree.
She managed to make each mouthful an erotic experience. Finally, with a little-girl widening of the eyes, she raised the whole plate to her mouth and started to lick.
But then, in the lounge, she became involved in an exchange with Matt. Although she should have been reeling with calories and wine – we’d started a kitty to buy a few bottles for supper each night – she wanted him to drive to the village and buy her more gin. He was scheduled to read aloud from his poems and short stories, he was saying. He clearly implied she’d had more than enough anyway.
‘But Matt, darling, you know I need a drink. A real drink.’ She put a scarlet fingertip on his throat, circling it round his Adam’s apple. Then she tiptoed the first two fingers up to his beard. At last she hooked her little finger in lock of grey and tipped his chin towards her.
‘Nyree! For goodness’ sake!’ he began, waving his hands as if to fend her off without having to touch her.
‘Who said anything about goodness, sweetie?’ She ran her spare hand down his side till it rested on his buttock. She pulled his hip towards her.
‘Nyree!’
At this point, right in the middle of the lounge, she kissed him hard on the mouth. The little finger remained where it was. The other hand did not.
No one spoke; no one moved – embarrassment? Prurience? The sheer impossibility of doing anything remotely useful? Then Kate opened the door. She stopped on the threshold. Everyone looked at her.
‘Ah, Nyree,’ she said, ‘are you going to share that whisky I bought for you this morning? I’ve organised glasses.’
Nyree abandoned Matt. She walked steadily, elegantly, to the door, which Gimson held open for her. I happened to look from her face to his. For the first time I understood that he might be a good doctor. Compassion, even tenderness, softened his mouth and eyes.
He didn’t follow her. He quickly rearranged his features and claimed the only comfortable chair in the room.
We shuffled the rest into a circle, and begged Matt to start reading.
He read beautifully. We were all willing him to, of course, and relaxed as his voice grew in confidence and authority. But one or two of the older students fell unambiguously asleep, and I could not restrain my yawns. Neither, in the end, could Matt himself.
‘That’s it, folks,’ he said. ‘Sorry. And if you’ve any questions we’ll save them till after coffee.’
Despite the second mug, I still felt somnolent, and had only a hazy idea of the discussion.
‘But what is truth?’ someone was asking.
Somehow they must have got on to the perennial discussion about the relationship between fact and fiction. Kate was arguing stoutly on the side of the writer’s creativity. Gimson insisted that fiction was only a regurgitation of what had happened in reality. Toad supported him, with more enthusiasm than intellectual rigour.
‘Take Lawrence, for instance,’ Gimson said. ‘He seems to have a following among you – er, Brummies, is that the term? Local boy made good, I suppose.’
‘He’s from Nottingham, not Birmingham,’ I said, but was ignored.
‘He calls Sons and Lovers a novel, but it’s pure autobiography.’
I couldn’t be bothered to argue.
Then Nyree surprised me. ‘Look at that Brontë woman,’ she said. ‘The one that Japanese man was talking about. Didn’t she write that book of hers because of one of her neighbours? Married the governess while he’d still got a wife?’
Where could she have picked that up? And why had she cared enough to remember it? Tomorrow I would fight my way through the barricade of sex and personal dislike to find out more. But tonight I wanted more than anything to sleep.
Chapter Four
I fought my way up. I knew I wasn’t really drowning, that I must be having a nightmare. But I couldn’t explain why I was being shoved and buffeted by the otherwise calm water. Except, of course, it was a dream, and silly things happen in dreams. And then it wasn’t a dream. The buffeting was someone shaking my shoulder. Someone who was yelling at me to wake up.
I made a final heave and came up shaking my head. It was Shazia, and she was calling my name, over and over. I pulled myself up on an elbow and blinked at her, fighting for breath. So I hadn’t been drowning. Just fighting asthma. A couple of puffs of my inhaler and I’d live.
But I still couldn’t make sense of it all. And then I could. Shazia was crying and pointing wildly. She thrust my dressing gown at me and ran out. I followed.
The door to the nice end room was open. Nyree’s ro
om. Shazia was calling me from inside.
A wave of alcohol hit me as I went in. I stepped back, it was so powerful. And then there was another smell. Vomit. My stomach rocked in sympathy. One curtain was half open. I pulled it back fully and opened the other, too. When I turned to the bed, I wished I hadn’t. Nyree wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see her like this. Not that at first sight there was much wrong. She might have been asleep. Her limbs lay apparently relaxed, and her eyes were closed. But her face was puffy, the fine bones almost hidden, and her skin was a reddish blue. And from the far corner of her mouth, slack and open, came a trickle of vomit.
‘What shall we do?’ Shazia was yelling.
‘Get Gimson. And dial 999,’ I said, knowing neither would help but not having any other ideas. And I retreated to the door: I couldn’t stay closer to Nyree, but I couldn’t leave her on her own.
Gimson came running; and he was alert and cool. He touched Nyree’s neck, and then seemed nonplussed. He fumbled with the duvet.
‘There’s no sheet,’ he said tersely, and pushed past me into the corridor.
At last I realised what he’d wanted to do.
‘We’ll use a clean towel,’ I said, and covered Nyree’s face.
The ambulance drove off. Someone switched off the flashing blue light. There was no need for haste, after all.
We stood there, sober in the grey morning light, the halfdozen who’d watched Nyree being taken away, and tried to find something to say.
Shazia was dithering; I put my arm loosely around her shoulders. ‘We might as well get everyone in,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s nothing we can do here, and we can’t risk Agnes catching cold in this rain. I’ll get the kettle on, while you have another go at waking Kate and Matt.’
‘I don’t like –’ She stopped.
‘OK, you do the tea. I’ll roust them out.’
I could see why she should be reluctant. One room or two? I tried to work out a strategy to minimise embarrassment.
As it was, I need not to have worried. There was no reply from either room.
Gimson was talking to a policeman in his twenties when I came downstairs. I picked up the words ‘inquest’, ‘post-mortem’, ‘alcohol poisoning’. Gimson spoke with cool authority; the constable listened with respect. Until he saw me.
‘Were you wanting something, miss?’
‘Not specially. I was interested because I found the body. Me and Shazia. We called Mr Gimson.’
‘I dare say we shall want to talk to you later, miss.’
And so I was dismissed. I would go back to my own room and try to write.
My route did not, of course, take me past Nyree’s room but I found myself going to it. The door stood wide open. No one was inside. But it occurred to me that if Nyree had died unnaturally – and that accorded with what Gimson thought – the room might contain useful information. Using my handkerchief in the best Agatha Christie tradition, I closed it. It would lock automatically, like all our doors, on the Yale lock. But I felt the constable had been careless, and made it my business – I wish I weren’t always so damned officious – to stroll back and mention it. I would be as tactful as possible. I hate people telling me how to do my job, and I didn’t want to put his back up. I need not have worried, however: his panda drove away even as I reached the front door. And then I was worried.
I went in search of Shazia. I found her coming down the stairs from her flat with an armful of bed linen.
‘I thought I’d get the room straight as soon as I could,’ she said.
‘No! You’ve got to leave it as it is,’ I said, and then wished I hadn’t been so schoolmarmish. ‘Evidence – there may be some evidence there. That’s why I locked it.’
‘But the smell – we ought to let some fresh air in. And the constable didn’t say anything about evidence or anything.’
‘I was friendly with a detective once. A rather senior one. He dinned it into me: never touch anything.’
‘But there’s no reason –’
‘Just to put my mind at rest – please. Don’t even go in there until I’ve phoned my friend.’
Shazia was plainly unhappy.
‘In any case,’ I said, groping for something persuasive, ‘someone’s got to decide whether the course should go on. And I’m afraid that someone’s you.’
I watched her retrace her steps. A pillowcase slipped from the pile, and she had to pick it up. I made my way to the office and the telephone.
The last person I wanted to contact was the man I’d described as my friend. Not because I didn’t like him; I did. But because he liked me, too much. We’d formed two sides of an eternal triangle in the spring, and I liked and respected him too much to want to stir up hopes I knew I couldn’t fulfil.
I dialled and waited. I looked around: her office was neat and well organised. It put mine to shame. The plants grew, the calendar was up to date, the furniture newly dusted and the bin empty.
‘West Midlands Police?’
‘Can I speak to DCI Groom, please? Rose Road Police Station.’
‘I’m afraid he’s not available at the moment. Can anyone else help?’
‘Sergeant Dale?’
But it was not Ian who answered. A voice from the heart of the Black Country spoke: ‘DS Reed. Can I help you?’
‘Tina! What’s all this about Sergeant Reed?’
Tina and I had spent more time than either of us liked in each other’s company in the spring, when she had been my minder. But although we came close to killing each other, closeted in the confines of my semi, we also became quite fond of each other in a guarded sort of way.
‘Ah,’ she began, ‘got me promotion through at last. Imagine me sewing on all them stripes.’
‘I can: I can still see you sewing all those curtains up in my spare room!’
‘How’s yourself, then, our Soph?’
I brought her up to date with my limited news.
‘And did you know as how Chris is back from India?’ she asked. I could hear the grin in her voice. ‘Came back Sunday, he did.’
‘He wrote and asked me to meet him,’ I admitted. ‘But I told him I’d be on this writing course. Wouldn’t be able to get away.’
‘Oh, ah,’ she said, the syllables signifying profound disbelief. ‘Any road, Ian Dale picked him up.’
‘Does he get any leave so he can get over his jet lag?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. He said as how he wanted to have a couple of weeks’ holiday there, when he’d finished with Delhi. Be a tourist, like.’
‘Good for him.’ Better than a week at Eyre House failing to learn how to write. ‘So will he be taking on this case?’
‘What case?’
‘Sorry: I’ve got everything out of order. I’m on a residential writing course. Right? Out at Eyre Park.’
‘Back of beyond, that.’
‘Yes. Not very exciting. But one of my fellow students has just died, and the local police are very – relaxed about it.’
‘Any reason for them not to be?’ Her voice was suddenly alert.
‘She wasn’t old. She didn’t threaten suicide. A doctor here reckons it’s alcohol poisoning.’
‘Well, then.’
‘But so many people here hated her. I’ve just got a feeling.’
‘Feeling, my aunt Fanny! Soph, haven’t you got nothing to go on?’
‘Nothing at all. I’d love to be proved wrong.’
‘OK. Tell me what our people have done so far.’
‘Nothing. The ambulance people took the woman away and then a kid in a panda turned up and went away again. Leaving her room open to the four winds. I just stopped the administrator here from giving the room a thorough clean.’
‘Jesus. OK. Seeing as how I know you, I’ll have a word with Chris, shall I?’
She expected me to back down – she’d seen my efforts not to get emotionally involved with him.
‘Great,’ I said brazenly. ‘Do that.’
Shazia was in
the kitchen, making coffee for everyone who was up. There was some sort of emergency get-together in the lounge, and I ought to have been there. But I couldn’t face the questions they’d want to ask, questions I’d want to ask in their situation, and I drifted out on the terrace. It had stopped raining, and I wanted some fresh air to clear my still foggy brain.
If I sat down on an inviting bench I might even go to sleep. It had been a real effort to respond to Shazia’s frantic summons. Normally I’m up and working at raising my level in the Canadian Air Force Exercises by seven-thirty. How I should have slept through till nine, goodness knows. Every movement was still almost as much an effort as it was to think. And why had Shazia come to me? Ah, because she couldn’t wake Kate, and she wouldn’t want to alarm Agnes or her friends. Why me when Gimson was the logical choice? Perhaps Shazia wouldn’t be able to think of a rational answer either.
Where should I meet Chris? How should I speak to him? I really do like the man. Like. I’m fond of him. Fond enough not to want to cause him pain. Because what he felt for me last time we met wasn’t liking, but love.
I thought I’d rather meet him among other people. That way there’d be no opportunity for personal displays from either of us. A hug, a kiss, can’t be neutral. Not in our circumstances.
It was time to return to the house. It was unfair of me to leave Shazia to deal with all the problems of breaking the news and deciding how much of the show would go on. But Shazia had Matt and Kate to call on. I was only a student, not a responsible, reliable member of staff. Not here. At college, maybe, but not here.
I took the long way back into the house – along the terrace, on to the gravel path at the side, and then via the drive. Through the umbilical corridor. Over the top, Sophie, I told myself grimly.
In the corridor outside the lounge the two girls were in half-resentful tears. They had each other. I looked into the library; the science-fiction student might never have heard of sudden death. One of the ladies – we still hadn’t sorted out the menu for tomorrow, of course – was hurrying downstairs with an asthma spray like mine.
Dying to Write Page 4