by Granger, Ann
‘I expect that was their intention,’ said Jess.
‘Really? What on earth for? There was one older man used to turn up from time to time on his own. You could hardly see his features for beard. He wore a filthy raincoat tied round the middle with string and had a little dog. The dog was his only companion that I ever saw. Otherwise he travelled alone, whereas the younger ones turned up in little groups. But I hadn’t seen the old chap for a while before the house went up in flames. Perhaps he’d moved on or died or something. I couldn’t tell you any of their names.’
‘Did you ever approach them yourself? Not that we’d advise that,’ Jess warned him.
‘I told several lots of the younger ones that they were on private property. They laughed. One told me all property was theft, cheeky young blighter. He was a weedy individual with the usual metal in his ears and a shaven head. I never spoke to the old fellow in the raincoat except once, very briefly, when I met him limping along the road. He had a black eye. I wondered if any of the other louts had found him in the house and beaten him up. I – er – I gave him a fiver. He was touchingly grateful. I suppose it was spent on booze but I always felt …’ Roger, who had already reddened when speaking of his own unexpected generosity, broke off altogether and shuffled about in embarrassment at having confessed it.
‘Yes?’ Jess prompted. She was surprised at his confession. But people often did surprise you.
‘I always felt that he was the traditional type of vagabond, you see. What you might call a nomad by choice, not like the others. There have always been old chaps like that wandering around the countryside. I remember them from when I was a boy. Some were old soldiers. They were not quite right in the top storey, many of them, but harmless, quite harmless. They’d turn up at the back door and beg a crust of bread. My mother, who was a very charitable woman, once gave one of them an old coat of my father’s. My father was mortified because the tramp wore it round the district for weeks and everyone recognised it. He – my father – got his leg pulled about it at the golf club.
‘Of course, the old man with the dog was still trespassing on private property. But I felt he did no real harm, unlike the younger ones. I have wondered since the fire if the unfortunate young fellow who died there had encountered some of the other scruffs and they’d set about him. Things could have got out of hand and they took fright and decided to destroy evidence. That could have happened, couldn’t it?’ He waited for Jess’s reply.
‘It could have done, certainly. Had you seen anyone there earlier that day? Any of the drug addicts or hippies?’
Roger shook his head regretfully. ‘One didn’t always see them; one just saw the mess they left behind. They left needles lying about. I did persuade the council to send a special team out to collect the needles on a couple of occasions, although they were very reluctant to do it, again on the grounds it was private property and they weren’t responsible. I thought it might prompt the council into contacting Crown and making him do something about the place, at least have it made secure. But nothing happened. They did bill Crown for the manpower and time taken for the collection, though. They sent the bill to his solicitor, who paid it.
‘The young ones often had alcohol there, too, and left bottles. I collected those. Of course, in order to do that, I myself had to trespass. But I saw it as the lesser of evils. I took all the bottles I found to the bottle bank.’
‘Very commendable, Mr Trenton. You are aware that simple trespass is a civil offence, not a criminal one? It’s a tricky situation for the authorities, especially if, as in this case, the owner of the property has not himself requested the trespassers to leave, or instructed his representative to do so.’
‘Of course I am. I must say I would have expected that solicitor to have done something on behalf of his client but if he wasn’t specifically asked to, as you say … But he knew about it because I wrote to tell him often enough. If the trespassers do any damage, break in, that’s different, isn’t it? I realise it would be hard to prove they had broken in. They would always say they found a window forced and just climbed through.’ Roger scowled. ‘They have all the answers.’
‘That’s usually the defence they put forward,’ Jess agreed. ‘It’s also complicated by the fact that these people using Key House for drink or drugs or just to sleep overnight did not, apparently, have any intention of staying there for a long time, taking up residence. By the time the police arrived, they’d have moved on.’
‘No electricity,’ said Roger, ‘although that wouldn’t have stopped them. More likely the remoteness of the house encouraged them to leave. On the rare occasions they tried to stay, they lasted about a week and then gave up and went off looking for somewhere nearer to the bright lights. They’d be too far away from all their chums at Key House – and from any pubs or clubs they frequent and where they probably pick up their supplies of whatever drugs they favour. The police have spoken to Crown, I suppose, now he’s returned?’
‘Yes, we have.’
‘You don’t happen to know what plans he has for the place now?’ Roger looked at her hopefully. ‘Surely he won’t just bugger off back to Portugal – excuse my language – and just leave the ruins to fester? The whole business has been very upsetting. I don’t only mean the fire. I mean living so near to a place that attracted so many undesirables. We have a number of elderly people round here and some of them live alone. Now there’s been a murder there, too. The previous situation can’t be allowed to continue. We would all of us, local residents, be under intolerable stress.’
‘The ruins provide no shelter now, Mr Trenton, and I doubt will attract the sort of undesirables you were describing as being there before the fire. I am just on my way to see Muriel Pickering,’ Jess added.
‘There you are, then. Muriel lives alone!’ said Roger triumphantly. ‘That small dog she has won’t protect her. Although Muriel can be quite fierce and would probably see off any intruder. But it’s not right that people shouldn’t feel safe in their homes!’
‘We don’t know Mr Crown’s long-term plans,’ Jess told him. ‘But we are reasonably confident he means to make some decision about the property. It’s been nice to talk to you, Mr Trenton. I must be on my way to Mullions.’
‘Let me know if you need any more help from me,’ Roger told her politely, ignoring the fact that he’d not had anything new to say.
He could be right, even so. Matthew Pietrangelo might just have walked in on a couple of drug addicts off their heads. They might have thought he was an undercover copper. Jess promised that she would get in touch if necessary, and Trenton seemed satisfied.
There was no sign of Muriel at the front of the house, but there was a strange smell filling the air. It suggested bran and seemed to come from the rear of the building. Jess walked down the side of the house and round the corner.
The cockerel and his harem were clustered around the back door. They seemed expectant. At first Jess was alarmed to see, through the kitchen window, what she took to be smoke filling the room, making it impossible to discern anything within. But Hamlet had begun to bark inside, signalling that he’d detected an intruder who had approached the house. The back door flew open and a great cloud of steam billowed out. The smell of bran became overpowering. The chickens fled, squawking, into the undergrowth smothering the back garden, as Hamlet erupted from the house and began a furious war dance around Jess’s feet. An apocalyptic figure emerged in a haze of steam, appearing to brandish a weapon. It turned out to be Muriel, waving a wooden spoon.
‘Don’t mind the dog!’ she yelled by way of greeting and reassurance. ‘Shut up, Hamlet!’
Hamlet stopped darting at Jess’s shins and stood glowering at her, growling softly in his throat.
‘He’s a good watchdog,’ Jess observed.
‘Doesn’t miss a trick!’ said Hamlet’s proud owner. ‘He can suss out friend from foe in a second or two. He’s stopped barking, you see. That means he thinks you’re probably OK. He might just k
eep a close eye on you, but don’t worry about that. Come in.’
The invitation was hospitable but Jess accepted it with a certain reluctance. The kitchen air was still full of steam. Sinister glooping noises came from a large enamelled tub on the stove and the overpowering smell was frankly awful.
‘Mash for the chickens,’ explained Muriel, prodding at the tub’s contents with the wooden spoon, ‘old fashioned but cheap. I cook up all the peelings and odd leftovers with it. Chickens love it. It’s about ready. I’ll turn off the stove and leave it to cool. We can go into the sitting room. I’ll leave the back door open. It lets in the cold but it lets out the steam. This way.’
Jess was led along a narrow, dingy hallway into the room she’d observed through the front window on her first visit. It was no tidier, although the plates of unfinished food had gone, the scraps no doubt fed into the mash. Books and newspapers still littered every surface. Muriel swept an assortment from a sofa.
‘Sit down and I’ll dig out the elderflower.’
‘Thank you, but actually this is an official call.’ Jess sat cautiously on the sofa. Shiny black strands protruding through holes in the cloth revealed the filling was of horsehair.
‘Don’t say you’re on duty and can’t have a drink,’ said Muriel. ‘Because it’s only elderflower cordial, made by yours truly. It won’t make you tiddly.’
A glass of some slightly muddy liquid was thrust into her hand. Jess thought apprehensively that it might as well be poteen, and she only had Muriel’s word that it wasn’t.
Her hostess plonked herself down on a sagging armchair against the opposite wall. Above her head hung one of the two oils Jess had seen through the window. She could now make out that they were seascapes, showing what looked like fishing smacks on an unquiet ocean. Hamlet had followed them and sat in the doorway, guarding the entrance and exit like Cerberus. Even if he only had one head, there was a distinct suggestion of the Underworld about him. Wisps of mash-scented steam escaping from the kitchen stood in for the smell of sulphur.
‘What do you want, then?’ asked Muriel. ‘Cheers!’ She raised her glass.
‘Oh, er, cheers!’ Jess waved her own glass feebly in reply and wondered if she would be given a chance to tip its contents into a plant pot nearby, the occupant of which had long since expired through lack of water. ‘I’d like to talk about the past, Mrs Pickering.’
‘I do wish,’ Muriel burst out with a return to her habitual irritability, ‘that you and that sergeant of yours would stop calling me Mrs Pickering! I’m Miss Pickering. I know it’s the fashion for women nowadays, married or not, to style themselves mizz, but I’m Miss. I never married and I’m not ashamed of it.’
‘I’m not married, either,’ said Jess.
‘Shacked up with someone?’
‘No.’
‘Sensible girl. I never married because Father wouldn’t have it. My mother died when I was fifteen and after that, it was just Father and me here. He was a semi-invalid. I dare say he could have done more for himself, or to help me, if he’d had a mind to, but he didn’t. “Semi-invalid” meant he could do the things he wanted to, like fishing. He was a keen fisherman. But he couldn’t chop up wood or push a vacuum cleaner round. So I had to look after him, the house, garden, chickens … we even had a couple of goats back then and a donkey some gypsies left behind. So I never had time to get married. Not that Father would have allowed it.’
‘He couldn’t have stopped you,’ Jess pointed out. ‘Not once you were of age.’
‘That just shows how much you know,’ retorted Muriel. ‘He told me if I didn’t take care of him, he wouldn’t leave me Mullions in his will. He’d leave it to some charity or other. Not that he was a charitable man, far from it, but he was a spiteful one. He meant it. My family has lived here for a hundred and fifty years and I wasn’t going to be done out of my inheritance, or what was left of it.’ She waved a hand in a circular motion indicating everything about them. ‘We used to own all you can see out there. Bit by bit all sold to prop up our finances. The last lot of farmland was sold off in 1967. The Pearson family bought it and they’re still there.’
‘So you’ll have lived here all your life,’ Jess seized the opportunity to redirect the conversation to the subject that had brought her.
Muriel gave an unexpected laugh that sounded like an unoiled hinge creaking open. ‘I bet you think I’m as old as the hills, eh? Well, I’m not. I just look it. I’m fifty-nine.’ Observing Jess’s face, she gave a satisfied nod. ‘That shook you, eh? It’s OK, I don’t mind you sitting there with your mouth open.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jess apologised, flushing.
‘What for? You’re not responsible. I ain’t a beauty, never was. I started going grey when I was still in my thirties. Marriage was never on the cards for me. I never knew how to chatter away about pop music or films, or dance or flirt, or anything like that, never learned. So I dare say no one would have wanted me, anyway. I’m fit, mind you, and had plenty of time to learn other practical things. I have to do everything round here. Notice the gate as you came in?’
Jess recalled the chicken wire spread over a rough wooden frame. ‘Yes.’
‘I made that,’ Muriel told her proudly. ‘I’ve been up on the roof and replaced a couple of tiles several times. You name it, I can probably do it. You haven’t drunk your cordial.’
‘I’m savouring it,’ said Jess firmly.
‘Savour away. Let me know if you’d like a top-up.’ Muriel topped up her own emptied glass.
‘Miss Pickering!’
If she didn’t insist now on asking Muriel the questions she’d come here to put, it was beginning to look as though Jess wouldn’t get a chance. Muriel was showing distinct signs of settling in with the elderflower cordial. Jess suspected the contents had been pepped up with something stronger, like gin. She resolved to find a moment to tip hers into the plant pot, whatever else. Muriel’s normally spiky attitude had mellowed and she’d relaxed in her chair beneath the storm-tossed fishing ketches. Even Hamlet had settled down in the doorway with his nose on his paws and his eyes shut. From time to time faint rumbling noises came from his direction. Muriel’s eyelids were also drooping.
‘Miss Pickering!’ Jess repeated more loudly.
Muriel’s eyes flickered open. ‘What?’ she asked, her hand groping for the bottle. ‘Top-up now?’
‘No, thank you very much. I came to ask you about Key House.’
‘What about it?’ enquired Muriel. ‘It burned down and was empty for years before that, so what’s to ask?’
‘I’m interested in before that, when it was still lived in, years ago. Sebastian Crown, his wife and his child … do you remember those days?’
‘Of course I do!’ replied Muriel with a touch of her customary truculence. ‘My brain’s all right. I don’t forget things. I have always …’ She tipped up the bottle and peered at it critically. ‘I have always had an excellent memory. This one’s empty. I’ll get us another.’
She began to struggle out of the chair.
‘If we could talk about Sebastian Crown first,’ Jess insisted.
‘Oh, he’s been dead years,’ said Muriel, sinking back into the depths of the chair. ‘I couldn’t stand the fellow. They’re a bad lot, the Crown men, in the blood – rotters. Like father, like son, as they say. I saw young Gervase yesterday. He was mooching round the house, visiting the scene of the crime.’ Muriel added with a sinister curl of the lip. ‘Hah!’
‘In what way was Sebastian Crown a rotter?’ Jess was not diverted as she sensed Muriel had intended.
‘He’s gone now,’ Muriel told her with deep satisfaction, ‘and I can say what I like about him. I can speak the truth. He was a millionaire, you know, and people are very careful what they say about you if you’re rich, especially if you’re a bully like Sebastian. All that money, all gone to that son of his,’ she shook her head in sorrow. ‘No fairness in life, is there? Sebastian wasn’t nice, oh, no. Successful? Yes.
Kept in with the right people? Yes. Decent man? Decidedly not. I liked his wife,’ Muriel finished unexpectedly.
‘No one talks about his wife,’ Jess prompted.
‘That’s because she finally plucked up the courage to leave him. It was the big talking point and scandal hereabouts. Mind you, people talked about it behind closed doors because of Sebastian, who went about looking like Henry the Eighth on a bad day. I was sorry for Amanda,’ Muriel continued. ‘She was very lonely, poor girl. She used to walk along the lanes around here on her own. “Getting my exercise”, she used to call it. Getting out of the house and out of his way, more like it. I’ve always had a dog and walked it every day. You might say it got me out of Mullions and out from under Father’s eye. He was always wanting something done, cup of tea, fetch something from upstairs, look for some book he reckoned he’d mislaid and probably never had in the first place! So Amanda and I had something in common if for different reasons.
‘I used to bump into her somewhere along the way and, after a while, we got chatting and then we began walking together. We’d arrange a time and a spot to meet. Occasionally she’d go up to London for two or three days, shopping, or going to the theatre. She’d tell me what she’d seen, describe it all. I liked to listen to her. She asked me a couple of times to go with her, but Father would have decided to have one of his “turns” at the very mention, so I told her it wasn’t possible. She was always happier when she’d been away from Key House for a day or two. Now, some people …’ Muriel wagged a forefinger at Jess. ‘Naming no names, you know. Some people might have thought she had a boyfriend in London. But I don’t believe she did.’
Muriel jerked forward and hissed with such vehemence it made Jess jump, and Hamlet raise his head and give a little yelp. ‘I don’t suppose for a minute that she had a fancy man, because she was too damn scared of Sebastian!’