Cheryl was at the wheel and she wound down the window. ‘Sorry,’ she said, handing Sir Repton a Tesco plastic bag. ‘I didn’t have much time as I had to go to the hairdresser in Woldham this morning. Had a bit of a problem with the Sun-in last night.’ She patted her now ash blonde hair. ‘You’ll be all right with baked beans won’t you? You can’t go wrong with ’em really. I’ve got you some nice white sliced. Can’t stop I’m afraid, Lance says he’s not going anywhere so I’ve got the car.’ She waved as she drove back down the drive.
Chapter seven
Laura put Venetia’s disturbed night down to her high intake of pulses, but Venetia was convinced it wasn’t wind.
‘I’d taken my Gavescon,’ she protested. ‘It was footsteps and then an awful clanking noise coming from this direction that woke me.’
They were standing in a small, dilapidated bathroom on the opposite side of the landing to Venetia’s bedroom. It had obviously been omitted from the 70s facelift. Both the cast iron bath and basin had rusty orange marks formed by the long forgotten but persistent dripping of taps. In one corner, above a huge square wooden toilet seat, the arm connecting the chain to the ancient overhead cistern hung down.
‘Then you must have pulled the chain too hard or something. These old mechanisms are very delicate you know.’ Laura could smell a damp musty aroma coming up from the sodden floorboards.
‘But I didn’t go to the bathroom. I was too frightened to move,’ Venetia said.
They went back downstairs to the pantry next to the kitchen. A pile of ceiling plasterwork lay in the middle of the room. Beside it stood Lance Wilkes leaning on a shovel, the wheelbarrow by his side.
‘Right mess this and now Repton’s disappeared,’ he said. ‘Lucky I knew where the stopcock was. Still, not much else I can do I’m afraid.’ He leant the shovel against one of the many empty shelves and walked out.
Laura and Venetia went to find Sir Repton. He was in his office on the telephone to the plumbers so they returned to the pantry and Laura began clearing up the debris.
‘It must have been the Cointreau. That’s what made you forget you’d been to the bathroom.’ Laura scooped up a load of plaster. ‘Put the barrow a bit closer, dear. Funny I didn’t hear anything and I was right next door,’ she continued.
‘I’d say that was pot calling kettle black. I didn’t have any Cointreau if you recall.’
‘Here, you hold the shovel and hand me the broom.’ As Laura began sweeping, she remembered that Venetia was right. ‘Perhaps it happened earlier, before you went to bed.’ She brushed the remaining plaster into the shovel. ‘You flushed and that’s what started it off. Then perhaps you heard me getting ready for bed.’ Laura looked round as Sir Repton came panting in.
‘No. I’ve said it before,’ Venetia was saying. ‘It was all that clanking. As if someone was hitting the pipes. Why won’t you believe me Laura?’ Venetia dropped the shovel. ‘I’m going to go and sit down,’ she said and headed down the passage.
‘You know, of course,’ Sir Repton said, ‘that it was Rosalind. I also awoke and heard. I was too petrified to move.’ He held the back of one hand to his forehead. ‘I lay in bed paralysed with a feeling that my intestines were at any moment about to bubble out of a hole in my stomach, and what’s more, she left the back door open.’
‘We probably forgot to lock it last night. Or perhaps Cheryl came in early for something. Now let’s go and make a cup of coffee.’
As they walked through to the kitchen, Sir Repton remained agitated. ‘It’s another of her signs. I know it. The door… It can only mean one thing, a stranger is approaching and that stranger is death. I feel the net around me drawing closer.’
‘How would an eighteenth-century serving wench know how to use the bathroom?’ Laura removed a large spanner that had been left beside the Aga before putting the kettle on. ‘Back in the days before Wellworth Lawns was converted, we had countless plumbing incidents of this sort. What you want to do is forget about restoring the stable block and get some modern pipework installed. That’s the way forward.’
Sir Repton slumped into a chair. ‘That may be true but this was Rosalind’s work. I am beginning to understand her now. Her message is clear.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Water! I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. It’s proof that Rosalind was responsible for Matilda’s death.’ Sir Repton was wide-eyed with anxiety.
It was par for the course, but still Laura admired his acting skills.
‘I remember having a hunch, a presentiment, that affected the inner recesses of my colon that very morning,’ he continued. ‘But I put it down to the artichoke soup we’d had for supper, because Matilda was also suffering from flatulence when I took breakfast with her in her room.’
‘I was only saying to Venetia, wind is the bane of all our lives.’
‘Ah yes, but Matilda was so hale; granted a little irked that Lance’s chickens were still off lay, but the porridge sufficed.’ Sir Repton shook his head. ‘We had had such a happy evening the night before. There was a winter wedding and I took her out in the wheelchair to listen to Jez Abelson playing. It was only unfortunate that while I had parked her outside the ballroom windows and gone to fetch a shooting stick to sit on, that Tam came across her. Matilda had joined in the chorus to Jez’s rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “Silent Night” – her voice always did have a resonant timbre.’
‘How do you know it was Tam?’
‘Matilda knew; she could tell them apart. She was not overly fond of Tam.’ He sighed. ‘I had promised her singing lessons…’ He put his elbows on the table and covered his eyes with his hands.
‘So what happened?’
‘I gave her her pills and she had recovered her temper by the next morning and was busy reading the Daily Mail at her writing desk when I left her after breakfast to let Canon Frank in. That’s why it was such a terrible shock.
When Canon Frank discovered her naked body, he rushed to find me. He was only minutes too late and was inconsolable – Matilda gave most generously to his cause.’
‘Canon Frank Holliday was in her bathroom?’
‘He often called upon Matilda to give spiritual guidance if she was particularly vexed. He thought perhaps she had fallen when he found her bedroom empty.’
‘Vexed?’ Laura frowned.
‘Matilda found the situation of her diabetes frustrating after her big toe was amputated. Her balance was never the same again. I’m sure Cheryl tried her best with her but often it was only Canon Frank who could calm her shattered nerves.’ Sir Repton lowered his head and covered his eyes again. ‘And now Rosalind is warning me. She drowned my wife and I am next.’ He let out a sob and jumped up from his chair. ‘I must call the Canon now. He’ll know what to do. Please forgive me.’ He hurried from the room.
Another spectacular display of dramatic skills Laura thought, as she went to find Venetia in the sitting room. She told her to wait while she went upstairs to collect their belongings.
Looking in her purse, she toyed with a ten pound note then begrudgingly changed her mind and left a twenty on top of the desk in Grimsby for Cheryl. She went into the bathroom one last time to check she hadn’t forgotten anything. Looking at the empty bathtub, she thought again about Matilda. Was she wrong to dismiss the idea of foul play? The diabetes had obviously been taking hold judging by Repton’s description but had it got to a stage that could lead to such drastic and sudden consequences? It was hardly a normal medical progression that one amputated big toe should lead to a fatal coma. The fact that Repton was insistent the ghost had something to do with it was manifestly an idiotic idea, but if not him, then who could have been instrumental in Matilda’s death? What of this elusive clergyman? He was obviously a key player, but Laura could not stay on to meet him now, she had to get Venetia back to Wellworth Lawns.
Chapter eight
‘Thank God we’re off. The man’s an absolute headcase.’ Laura put the key in the ignition.
She watched Sir Repton in the rear view mirror as he doddered back towards the house, Sybil Thorndike under one arm.
‘Do up your seatbelt, dear,’ she said to Venetia beside her, as she saw a battered white van careering up the drive. ‘That doesn’t look like the wedding planners.’
The van drew up beside them scattering gravel and a middle-aged woman dressed as a punk got out.
‘It’s not, it’s my daughter Angel,’ Venetia said.
‘Goodness, she must be the bishop of a very progressive ecclesiastical see.’ Laura wound her window down.
‘What are you talking about?’ Venetia said.
‘Her attire, I thought you said she was a bishop.’ Laura watched as Angel waved her arms and shouted to Sir Repton, who was making his way up the steps to the front door, ‘Wait, Uncle Repton.’
‘A bishop, heavens no,’ Venetia said. ‘She left the church ages ago, didn’t I tell you about it? Perhaps I didn’t – best forgotten anyway. She’s working for a donkey sanctuary now.’
Angel was running after her uncle.
He quickened his pace. ‘I’m no good for anything today. Goodbye,’ he called out, before shutting the door behind him.
Angel cursed loudly. She turned and for the first time, noticed Laura and Venetia sitting in their car. She came towards them, her Doc Martens pulverising the gravel beneath her feet.
‘Mummy, what are you doing here?’ she said, her hennaed Mohican catching in the window frame as she leant in the driver’s window next to Laura.
‘I might ask the same of you.’ Venetia cowered in the corner, gripping Parker to her chest. The pug growled at the black clothed apparition.
‘I often visit Uncle Repton. The old boy rattles around here with enough space to house London’s entire population of homeless cats.’
Laura saw a glint of metal as she watched a gobbet of spittle arc from Angel’s mouth and land on her lap and realised that a tongue piercing was the cause of Angel’s slight lisp.
‘But I’ve had a feeling for some time that his spiritual needs are not being met,’ Angel continued. ‘He may have got away with it but he needs to address his guilt. I’ve been trying to extract a written confession from him.’
‘You should leave him alone. He’s done nothing wrong.’
‘Mummy, you know nothing and that sidekick of his, Canon Frank Holliday is evil. His religious intentions are way out of line, and he and Repton are thick as thieves. Made Aunt Matilda mad with all their talk of transubstantiation.’ Angel wiped her mouth. ‘What with him and all the other detritus Uncle Repton has around him, he’s being positively encouraged to live the lie. Nothing good has happened here since he and Aunt Matilda started surrounding themselves with all these lovers of mammon. In fact she’d turn in her grave if she saw the amount of meat that gets chucked in the bin after those wedding bashes.’
‘How do you know?’ Venetia asked.
‘Recycling is an important part of my business. You never know where you might find a discarded bale of hay.’ Angel turned and gave an expansive wave of one arm in the general direction of the house, her many brass bangles jangling noisily like a drawer full of cutlery thrown on the floor. ‘Who knows, those two girls might even be hiding a donkey right here at Mount Cod. Right under his very nose. Lungworm’s gone crazy this year.’ Her arm came back to rest on the open car window. ‘And I like to check he’s looking after that dog of his. He can be very careless. Look what happened to Yorick.’ There was yet more jangling as she wagged a finger at her mother. ‘That pug looks overweight.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Laura patted Parker as he sat beside her on Venetia’s lap.
Angel extricated herself from the window but then her head burst in again, a nose stud inches from Laura’s face. ‘What are you doing here anyway? Have you been putting him against me, Mummy?’
‘We’ve been visiting, if it’s any of your business and of course I haven’t. I had no idea you even saw him.’
‘Well I haven’t seen him have I? I’ll have to try again another time. Meanwhile I’ve had a potential sighting in a field by the Hare and Hounds in Chipping Codswold.’
‘Sighting?’ Laura said. Was this yet another mad person seeing apparitions?
‘Woman thinks it may be a mule. But it’s lame. Donkey, mule, either way it needs investigating. Cheerio.’ Angel stamped back to her van, her short black skirt straining around her sizeable thighs.
‘Was your late husband a big man?’ Laura asked.
Venetia relaxed her grip on Parker and sighed. ‘Angel has always suffered from what she calls, “weight issues”. I wonder if she watches Cash in the Attic?’
‘What?’
‘Well, if I know anything about my daughter, she’ll have an ulterior motive for seeing her uncle. I don’t for a minute believe in all that spiritual nonsense she was talking about.’
‘She was pretty convinced of his guilt.’
‘I don’t know where she got that idea from but knowing my daughter she’ll be trying to use it to her advantage.’
‘Well, I think she has a right to look out for herself. It’s she who stands to inherit after all.’
‘Talking of inheritance.’ Venetia’s eyes lit up. ‘Do you think we’ll be back in time for Heir Hunters? Come on Laura, let’s get away from this fearful place.’
Chapter nine
Laura realised that her friends, Strudel Black and Jervis Willingdale, were in danger of information overload as she recounted the tale of her stay at Mount Cod to them, so she tried to slow her pace. ‘Venetia’s daughter Angel thinks Sir Repton is the culprit, but I’m not so sure. At least not acting alone. There could be a man called Canon Frank Holliday involved and then again, it could just as well be the housekeeper Cheryl Varley who murdered Matilda Willowby in her bath.’ She gave a curt nod of her head for emphasis.
As she and Parker had taken the short walk over to their bungalow in Mulberry Close, she had felt, for the first time since the death of the Brigadier, a certain exhilaration brought about by the potential of solving the crime.
Jervis adjusted his Woldham Bowls Club tie and took a swig of banana daiquiri. ‘Does it really matter if someone bumped off the old girl? Life’s short enough without having to worry about other people’s dead wives and anyway, what makes you so sure she was murdered?’
Laura reached for her glass – it was the slippery slope when Jervis announced that the bar opened at three-thirty but they had agreed that a spot of alcohol mid-afternoon sharpened the mind.
‘Something’s not right about her death,’ she said. ‘It was altogether too unexpected, also I’ve discovered a couple of things that make me suspicious. Firstly, the positioning of the keys in the bathroom door, and then a scrap of paper Venetia found, that leads me to believe that the housekeeper, Cheryl, was about to be sacked.’
‘There, you see Jervis, you are too harsh.’ Strudel said. ‘This is just the kind of project to which Laura excels and she has already found a motive.’
‘Fair play, my love.’ Sitting on the sofa next to Strudel, Jervis patted her knee.
‘Thank you Strudel,’ Laura said. ‘But it’s more than just a project; Angel’s inheritance may be at stake.’ A picture of the overweight punk crossed Laura’s mind but she carried on. ‘Finding out the truth is important. It’s a matter of justice.’
‘In my home country of Bavaria the police are taking much interest in such things. Should you not be talking with Woldham CID in this instance, Laura?’
‘Not Phil Sandfield, please.’ Laura had a long established mistrust of the local Woldham Inspector that, amongst other things, involved his allowing her late husband, Tony to fall asleep on the green of the eighteenth hole of Woldham golf course while under the influence of narcotics – it was a long story, best forgotten. ‘Anyway I’ve nothing concrete I can tell him. That’s the problem; I must find real evidence.’
‘So this Mrs Varley worked for Sir Repton’s wife?’ Jervis said.
‘Yes and a handyman called Lance Wilkes. And then there’s the wedding business. I don’t know what the financial arrangements were with them when Matilda was alive but they seem to be taking over the place, despite what Repton says. The identical twin girls boss him around – well they all boss him around.’ As Laura took another sip of her drink, the striking colour of Strudel’s cerise silk dress seemed to soften. ‘I met the man who heads the business too,’ she continued. ‘Robert Hanley Jones; bit of a slippery sort of chap if you asked me and Repton doesn’t seem to have a clue what kind of profit, if any, they make.’ She put her glass back down on the table beside her.
‘So you are unclear as to Sir Repton’s financial situation regarding this wedding business, but what has that to do with the housekeeper?’ Jervis said.
‘I don’t know. All I can do at the moment is try and build up a picture of the circumstances leading up to her death.’
‘So why pick on the housekeeper?’ Jervis asked.
‘Call it a gut feeling. From what I gather, Matilda didn’t suffer fools, although, as I’ve said I don’t much care for any of the people at Mount Cod, they’re all manipulative in one way or another. One of the twin girls even manhandled Venetia and, what’s more, she has all the keys to the house.’
‘I’d bump them up to the top of the list of suspects, if I were you.’ Jervis laughed then held his stomach. ‘Christ, Strudel where are the Rennies?’
Strudel picked up a packet on the table beside her and handed it to him. Jervis ripped open the box, popped out a couple of pills from their foil containers and lobbed them into his mouth.
‘You’re right,’ Laura said. ‘I should leave no stone unturned. I don’t suppose any of your successful Ancient Eros couples have had to plan a wedding?’
The Haunting of Mount Cod Page 6