Death Penalties

by Paula Gosling

  ‘Like zis bread stick vot I will place in your eye?’ Nightingale opened his menu and gave Matt a dangerous look across the top of it. ‘Let’s order this meal. I think your blood sugar is getting low.’

  ‘Just trying to cheer things up.’

  ‘I don’t want to be cheered up. I want to get back to the office. I have an idea.’

  Tom Murray looked disgusted. ‘Great. Have your idea. Me – I’ll have spaghetti.’

  Nightingale grinned. ‘They have something in common, at that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Loose ends.’

  EIGHT

  The old McMurdo house was in a tree-lined street in west Ealing. The street began with terraces, but these stopped at the edge of a small park that had been preserved against years of onslaught by eager developers. This minor piece of civic salvation had come about because the small park had originally been part of the McMurdo estate. It had been bequeathed to the borough on the understanding that it would never be built upon. This endowment on the part of the family was less than altruistic – the McMurdos did not like to be overlooked.

  The McMurdo family tree had sprung from strong roots, but its later growths were better at making money than sons. By the middle of this century, the only remaining branch was that which had sprouted from a young twig who had emigrated to Australia to make his fortune. Sheep and opal mining, mostly, but a bit of timber, too, had been the basis of his endeavours, and he had prospered. However, Australian weather being what it can be, even that McMurdo branch eventually withered down to one man – Burdoo McMurdo, a successful (of course) manufacturer of plumbing fixtures. It was Burdoo’s childless widow who had come to Britain to trace her husband’s roots and claim his heritage.

  Dolly McMurdo was what generous friends might call ‘a character’, and what everyone else called a case of all mouth and no taste. Dolly’s saving grace was that she knew she was loud, knew she was gauche, and knew she was laughed at, but didn’t give a damn. She was rich enough to soothe any ruffled feelings she might engender through an unkind but truthful observation or a misjudged slap on the back, and rich enough also to buy the good taste she lacked from those who had it and were willing to sell.

  In short, an interior designer’s dream and burden, in one.

  Dolly had swept into the Savoy like a bleached, beached whale become woman. Large in girth and gusto, she’d won over the staff with her good humour and large tips, and the other guests by involuntarily becoming a source of delicious disapproval to one and all.

  One horrified look at the old McMurdo mansion – now occupied mostly by wasps and black beetles – had convinced Dolly that she had a mission in life, and that was to renovate this fallen symbol of the family’s former power and prestige. No matter what it cost.

  ‘My God, would you look at the rotten heap!’ she had trumpeted on alighting from her rented chauffeur-driven Rolls. ‘Burdoo always told me it was a mansion, a dream of old England, and all that dingo dribble.’ Apparently she had then fixed the heavens with a mean eye, and had spoken to the sky. ‘Burdoo, you always were a liar – I should have flushed you down one of your own toilets when I had the chance, bless your little dried-up heart.’ On the chauffeur’s later telling of it, she had marched up the path through the nettles, given the front steps an almighty kick, then leaned back and looked up at the scabby paintwork and sagging roofline.

  Again, she had addressed a passing cloud. ‘Burdoo, I guess I’d better make an honest man of you and get this place back in shape before I die. Mind you, another shock like this one may send me along sooner than I think. Enjoy yourself up there while you can, you old wowser.’ She had then turned to the chauffeur and demanded to be driven to her friend Noelene Arletta Hanks’s house in Chelsea. Noelene was always bragging how she knew the finest interior decorators, wasn’t she? Well, here was the chance to prove it.

  The task set by Mrs McMurdo was a daunting one, for the structure of the house had suffered through many transformations (bedsitters, ever-decreasing in size and ever-increasing in number), encrustations (wallpapers from William Morris through Art Nouveau, Art Deco, wartime austerity, the New Look, the frankly fundamental Fifties, the hallucinogenic Sixties, a brief flowering of Laura Ashley, and finally flat buff paint over all when it served, even more briefly, as a hostel for recently-released sexual offenders), and visitations (families, single women, soldiers, students, young marrieds, the above mentioned ex-prisoners, and at last – through broken windows – the British weather). But it was a task that Brevitt Interiors – or, rather, Tess Leland – had taken to with gusto.

  And now it looked as if she would be able to complete what she had taken on, after all. After a reassuring phone call to the ward sister and a brief chat with Max, she spent the next morning talking with the men working on the house, getting firm commitments as to when she could begin scheduling the various stages of her own work. Then she met Adrian for lunch, and told him about her interview with John Soame.

  ‘I think it will be fine,’ she told him. ‘We’re only a ten-minute tube ride from the British Museum. We should be able to work out our schedules pretty easily, since we both work to our own hours. Max won’t be able to do much except read at first, so Mr Soame intends to use the next few weeks to make a start on his basic research. Then, as Max gets stronger, they’ll start proper studies. Max’s school is going to give me a syllabus, the appropriate books, and a suggested work schedule.’

  She reached for another roll and buttered it enthusiastically. Adrian watched her with approval. She had got so very thin so very quickly after Roger died, and then again when Max first fell ill. He leaned back as the waiter set down their first course. ‘You must be sure to take advantage of him,’ he advised.

  Her eyes widened. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘His expertise,’ Adrian said. ‘He knows a great deal about the entire Victorian era – particularly architecture – and you could do worse than ask his opinion if you come up against something in the McMurdo house you know little about. I mentioned it to him and he was very interested. He has a great eye for detail, and he’s made some unusual contacts in the antiquarian world.’

  Tess paused with her soup spoon in mid-air, considering John Soame in this new light. ‘Well, he may be an expert, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a grown man so lacking in self-confidence,’ she finally said.

  Adrian nodded, spreading pâté on a piece of thin toast. ‘His wife was one of the most unpleasant women I’ve ever known – and, my pet, I’ve known a few. I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead—’

  ‘That’s never stopped you,’ Tess commented.

  He ignored that. ‘Alicia did a proper demolition job on poor John, something about him seemed to bring out a vicious streak in her.’

  ‘You sound as if you knew her very well.’

  ‘She was my youngest sister.’ Adrian smiled sadly at Tess’s astonished expression. ‘Hers was a destructive soul. In the end she left him, went on a trip to India with a “friend” and was bitten by a rabid dog – which seemed to me simple justice.’

  ‘Adrian!’

  He eyed her over his wire-rimmed glasses. ‘She was as lovely as a flower to look at, but as deadly to the soul as cyanide.’ He sniffed. ‘There is no law that says you have to love your own family, especially when it throws out a dud like Alicia. My father suspected the milkman, of course, a narrow-eyed goat of a man who was always leaving extra cream. However, I have recently come across an engraving of his great-aunt Beulah who was the image of Alicia in a bustle. Besides, Mother may have been tempted by the dairyman – she was a woman of earthy appetite – but she was far too worried about what the neighbours might have thought to have actually succumbed to his ungulate charms.’ He waved to the waiter and indicated that they were ready for their next course. ‘Well, even if dear old John is a bit edgy, I still think he’ll be ideal for your situation
.’

  Tess pressed a large bite of Chicken Dijon onto her fork. ‘Oh, so do I,’ she agreed. ‘He could probably use a bit of comfort and appreciation.’

  Adrian raised an eyebrow and inspected her more closely while refilling her wine glass. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said, smiling mischievously to himself. ‘What have I done?’ ‘You’ve made certain Max will be tutored and I will have a man – albeit a nervous one – around the house. You’ve therefore made certain I’ll be free to protect you from the Monster McMurdo,’ Tess said briskly. ‘And that was just what you set out to do, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Why, Tess, you make me sound quite ruthless,’ Adrian said in a hurt tone.

  ‘You are quite ruthless, Adrian, when it comes to your own peace and survival. But never mind, we love you, anyway.’ Tess grinned and blew him a kiss across the flower arrangement. ‘All of your devoted slaves adore you, we always clank our chains when you pass.’

  Coming home that evening, weary but content, Tess hung her coat in the hall and then kicked off her shoes, moaning with pleasure and relief. She had walked about twenty miles since lunch, choosing plumbing fixtures and getting solid delivery dates out of four different suppliers and looking through a warehouse full of junk for just one little table that she finally found under the stairs, and then discovering that nobody had nineteen rolls of ‘Daisychain’. Two had fifteen rolls each, but of course they had totally different batch numbers. Now she had to convince the client to have ‘Fieldflowers’ instead.

  She started up the stairs, then had to come back down again as the phone began to ring. ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  Again. ‘Hello!’

  Silence.

  Tess felt familiar fury boiling up in her. This had been going on for weeks now. The phone rang at random times, but the result was always the same – silence. No giggling, no heavy breathing, no obscene suggestions. Just silence. Not the silence of a broken connection or a dead phone, either. Oh, no.

  It was the silence of someone listening.

  She had complained, of course. Her phone and her line had been thoroughly checked. No fault. And, as nothing was said of either an obscene or threatening nature, it was not a matter for the police. The phone people were sympathetic, but the only alternatives on offer were an interception service that would only ask what number had been dialled and who the caller wished to speak to by name, or changing her number, which would cost money she could not spare. Going ex-directory was free, but wouldn’t be effective until the new phone books came out next year.

  Tess reached for the whistle she had bought recently and hung by the phone. ‘Damn it, who is this? I’m sick and tired of being called at all hours of the day and night.’

  This time, just as she was bringing the whistle to her lips and taking a breath, just as if she could be seen, the silence was broken. A sense of movement from the other end of the line, and a whisper, like a snake shedding its skin.

  ‘We want the money, Mrs Leland.’

  The whistle dropped from her fingers and rolled under the bench. She was so dumbfounded she could only say, ‘What?’

  ‘The money, Mrs Leland. Give it back.’

  There was a terrible rasp and slither in the voice, and Tess felt the skin of her back and arms raise up in gooseflesh. A cold draft seemed suddenly to swirl down the hallway.

  ‘I . . . I . . . don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. What money?’

  Now it was worse. Not a whisper, but a chuckle.

  ‘You know. You know.’ Like a cruel child, pointing a finger on the playground, chanting, chanting. ‘You know.’

  ‘I don’t . . . I don’t . . . ’ Tess felt her throat closing, as if an invisible hand had encircled it.

  ‘It isn’t in the house – we looked. And you haven’t spent it – we checked. So you’ve got it hidden somewhere, right? If you don’t give it back, someone is going to be very, very cross.’

  Still a whisper, but now a gleeful, maniac whisper.

  And then a click. Dead line.

  Tess stood staring at the phone, as if she expected it to strike at her, but it was only a white plastic handset, silent again, connection broken.

  Slowly, Tess replaced the handset and stood staring at the phone. It had to be children, or some pubescent teenager trying to exert power in a threatening world . . .

  Boy? Girl? Man? Woman? It had no gender, no age.

  But it had known her name.

  Suddenly she whirled, ran up the stairway, down the hall and into her bedroom. Slamming the door behind her, she twisted the key in the lock and stood, panting, with her back against it.

  All was normal here.

  The white curtains, the delicate flowered wallpaper, the brilliant intersecting patterns of the patchwork quilt that covered the king-sized bed, the warm dusky pink carpet, her slippers and robe, the dried flower arrangement on the bedside table. All untouched, and her own. Safe.

  Eventually she calmed down sufficiently to move away from the door. Slowly she unbuttoned her suit jacket and went to the wardrobe for a hanger. A bath, some supper, a book in bed . . . she would not think about the call. She would not.

  She pulled at the door of the wardrobe – it seemed a little stiff – swung it wide, and began to scream.

  Things flew at her, moth-like, fluttering, and cold hard pellets poured over her face and body as she flailed about her, screaming and crying . . . and over it all . . . laughter.

  The wild, unceasing laughter of a demented old man.

  NINE

  With an almost imperceptible jerk, the train began to move out of the station. The train beside them seemed to slide backwards – an impression which always disconcerted Tess – and then they were out from under the roof and into the rain. In a moment the windows were covered with running drops and ribbons of moisture that converged and spread, blurring the world beyond.

  ‘If you’ll pardon me for saying, you look as if you haven’t slept well. Has something happened to Max?’ John Soame was asking, patiently. He seemed to have been asking it for some time.

  Tess shook her head and sipped some of the tea he had brought her. It was scalding, but tasteless. ‘No, he’s doing fine. I was frightened by the wardrobe.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  She shook her head again, and put down the tea in order to explain about the phone calls, the shower of confetti and fresh red cranberries that had cascaded out of the wardrobe, and the mechanical toy called a laughter-bag that had gone on shrieking long after she had stopped. ‘I felt like such a fool,’ she said. ‘It was just some terrible practical joke.’

  ‘But who do you know who would do such a cruel thing?’

  ‘No-one, as far as I know. I mean, I don’t have all that many friends of my own. We mostly entertained Roger’s clients or contacts in the business if we entertained at all. None of the people I know are given to that kind of “humour”.’

  ‘But when could someone have got into the house?’

  ‘Well, the house was empty all morning. But I called Mrs Grimble, and asked her about it. She arrives at two o’clock, and stays on until five, most days. She did the bedroom first, apparently, and there was nothing in the wardrobe then, because she hung up some dry-cleaning that she’d collected for me, and nothing happened. She was there all afternoon, except for about forty minutes when she went out to do my shopping – if I’m pressed for time on a particular day, I usually leave a list and the money on the kitchen table. Whoever it was must have got in during those forty minutes.’

  She was suddenly aware that a middle-aged woman sitting opposite them was listening avidly to their conversation, and lowered her voice. The woman looked away, making a pretence of non-interest, but her ears seemed practically to glow with attention. Well, let her listen, Tess thought. Let everyone listen. A sudden recklessness overcame her – this was too
important to worry about eavesdroppers or what the neighbours might think.

  ‘You say you’d been getting phone calls before this?’

  ‘Yes, frequently. But only silent ones. Last night was the first time anyone spoke to me.’

  ‘And the first time anyone has got into the house.’

  Tess nodded, her mind still filled with that terrible moment, when she had looked down and seen the carpet dotted with red berries and thought it her own blood. ‘Just when I realized what it all was, the telephone began to ring again.’

  ‘Did you answer it?’

  ‘I was afraid to. Eventually it stopped.’

  ‘I see.’ Soame was lost in thought for a minute, then spoke diffidently.

  ‘When your husband died, did you inherit any money, aside from insurance and so on? I’m sorry to pry, but someone seems to think you have some available.’

  Tempted to have a look at a possible heiress, the woman opposite risked a glance at them and met Tess’s eyes. Flushing, she turned away again, pressing her lips together. Tess felt some sympathy: the poor thing couldn’t have known that when she sat down she would be forced to share these intimacies. To get up would be to admit she’d been listening. And, of course, to get up would be to miss the rest. What price Hollywood when you could get all this drama for free on the 10:38?

  ‘I wish we had inherited something,’ Tess said, ruefully. ‘In a sense we lived from hand to mouth all the years we were married. I don’t mean we starved. I mean we lived up to and frequently beyond our means. Everything that came in went right out again – Roger was a real grasshopper – he never seemed to think about the future, because he found here and now so interesting, I guess. When he and Richard Hendricks started up their PR agency they did it with a bank loan – Roger was always amazingly good at talking to bank managers. Even when the agency started to thrive, every penny they made seemed to go straight back into the business. Roger had no secret accounts or deposit boxes.’