It was all fine for them until the body was found in 1992. They got tired of the renewed interest in the case manifesting in cars slowing down and people pointing up at their windows. They had sold to a single man who then lived an apparently staid and solitary life, and upon his death the house went to his three estranged adult daughters, who sold it again. The latest family to live there was from Finland and extremely practical about the tragedy. After three years, the husband’s work contract was ending and they were readying to return to Helsinki. Marnie didn’t mind showing me around.
I asked her to show me Annalise’s room first. She brought me upstairs and sighed as she opened the door for me. Inside: posters on the walls, homework on the desk, makeup on the dresser. They’d unwittingly given their daughter Annalise’s room.
I walked around. It was easy, if somewhat inaccurate, to think of Annalise at this desk, on this bed, in front of this mirror. The seventies would have had different bands on the posters, and different colours of lipstick, but the shape of the room and the placement of the windows limited the possible furniture permutations, so the main arrangements would have been the same. But it wasn’t Annalise whose footsteps I was tracking today. I was after Charlie.
“Was this always here?” I pulled open the door of a bulky wardrobe.
Marnie quickly interjected, “They’d rather you not open drawers or cupboards.”
“Sorry,” I said, pushing it shut. I didn’t care about this girl’s clothes. I just wanted to think about Charlie, at a tea party downstairs, coming up these stairs, crossing this room … There was a large window next to the wardrobe. I hope she pulls her curtains when she changes her clothes. Charlie would have had to take the skirt over to a more sheltered part of the room, or kept behind the wardrobe door, or taken a risk with the window. Or maybe it had had blinds then. I shrugged. What he’d done could have been done fast.
“Where’s the loo?”
“Do you need to … ?” Marnie asked anxiously. I supposed she had been asked to keep buyers off of their toilets as well.
“I just want to know if it’s upstairs or downstairs.”
“Oh! Yes. That’s fine. It’s right out here.” She walked me out into the hallway. “Over the kitchen. The plumbing all in one place.”
So he asks to go to the loo, heads up here, is gone for five or ten minutes … That works.
“Do you have photographs, Marnie? I noticed that you’re magic with a camera.” I had noticed nothing of the sort, just that Showcase Homes! had a good-looking website, but the flattery worked.
“I always think photos sell a house, more than a visit even. If the photos have captured the buyer’s imagination, well, the deal is done.”
“Do you have the older photos from other times the house was sold? Maybe even photos from when the Woods lived here?”
“Well …” She shuffled her feet. “Well, as I told you, we changed things around for selling. Max didn’t like people trying to get a look at the Woods’ private lives. Nowadays you would hire a stager, but back then we all just pitched in. Max—he was my mentor—felt it was important to let the house look like its future, not its past.” She nodded her head and enunciated the last words carefully. She had clearly thought them through and said them before.
“What was done with the Woods’ things?” I asked, trying to sound casual and gossipy, which seemed more likely to get a response than if I seemed official.
Marnie shook her head. “Max was very concerned. He didn’t want people buying them at auction and making some kind of murder-shrine out of them.”
The phrase “murder-shrine” had come out of her mouth without any hesitation. I understood immediately what novels she enjoys and what TV she watches.
“And the clothes!”
My ears pricked. I hadn’t even had to ask.
“Max didn’t want anyone to be able to buy Annalise’s clothes, and make some kind of obsessed sex-shrine.”
I kept my face grave. I did not laugh. I would like a police commendation for this. “What did he do with them?”
“The furniture he mixed in with bits and pieces from other places and sold them as is, without provenance.” She said the big word with a carefully practised accent. Perhaps Marnie had also been on a French exchange years ago. “People may be sitting on the Woods’ sofa right now but they wouldn’t know it.”
For a moment I felt as if I were in the audience of a horror film, shouting “Don’t sit on the couch!” to no avail. I did laugh a little. I covered my mouth. “But the clothes?”
“He boxed them up and sent them anonymously to an organisation that collects clothes for charity and sends them overseas. Actually, I did the boxing up. He trusted me like that. He—well, just like you, he said I was magic.” She blushed.
Damn. Overseas. “Magical Marnie, you wouldn’t by chance have the name of that charity, would you?”
“Of course. I’ll have to look it up.”
“And those old photos of the house? Of the way the Woods had lived in it?” I asked again, pushier. I didn’t have anything in mind to look for in such photos; I just wanted to be sure that they matched what I expected.
“I may have. I’ll check,” she said primly. I felt confident that this woman knew exactly what she had and just didn’t want to appear insensitive or like one of those thrill-seekers herself. “I would have taken some, I think, so that we could defend the company if anyone claimed that the Woods’ belongings had been damaged when they were moved out.”
“If you could email me when you find them, please.”
“Of course.”
As we walked down the stairs, I tried to picture the macabre gatherings Mrs. Wood had thrown for friends, trying to keep her daughter’s memory alive.
Marnie had an apparently congenital aversion to silence. “You know, I’m really proud of my photography skills. This room, it wasn’t so easy to capture the size. Because you see? If you stand over by the door—the obvious place—that wall there cuts everything off. It just looks small. But if you take it from up here …” She tugged my sleeve and pulled me up a few steps. “Perfect! Even shows the garden through the window. Ooh …” She pulled out her camera. “See what I did here?”
She handed the camera to me. I obligingly admired a series of shots of the room we were standing in, from various angles. She narrated the various qualities of the results: “See how this makes the room look small, even though it isn’t, and how this one makes you feel like you’re right in the room?” I did, indeed, feel like I was in the room. Magic.
I scrolled backwards through kitchen shots, bathroom, the back garden, then … “Oops!” she said. “My nieces.” She took the camera back.
I recognised them: Livvy and Bayley, I’d guess about six months since the debacle with their fringes.
“Rosalie is your sister?”
“You know her? Small world!” she announced in delight. Then, “She’s not in trouble, is she?” She laughed. It was a joke, because I’m police. Of course I have never heard such jokes before, not at every social gathering I’ve ever attended since I joined the force. I made myself keep a smile and not roll my eyes.
Marnie continued: “She’s not my sister. We’re cousins. But I call her girls my nieces because they’re so young and I’m so old… . Well, you know what I mean. They’re family. I took these pictures for their birthday last month, in the law office building.” She whispered, “We did it while Mr. Rigg was out. He doesn’t like children.” She wrinkled her nose judgementally.
She held the camera out to me again. “I had to use some of the same tricks, to make the room look good and not so cluttered. It’s that tower upstairs. They use it for storage. Well, Rosalie lets the girls use it as a playroom when she has to work during half-term. See, I angled things so that it feels like the room is spacious. You wouldn’t guess that there are boxes of files piled up around the daybed. I think I was standing on one for this shot. And you want the light shining in on them, not silhouet
ting them. See how I did that? I managed to get the view too.”
What a view it was, framed in those windows: two lonely poplars next to a railroad track. Annalise’s burial place.
I DROVE BACK to Nigel Rigg’s law office. I didn’t pull up to the house yet; just into the beginning of the drive to think. Of course this was near where Annalise had been found, in the sense that she had been found near Lilling. Everything in Lilling’s environs was “near” where Annalise had been found. It’s just that the tower here goes up a level higher than most buildings in the area. And the windows face that direction.
I pulled farther in and parked. I had been armed by Marnie with an excuse to return: some items she wanted passed on to Rosalie. I had some more questions and wanted them to appear idle.
Rosalie was hesitant when I entered. “I’m sorry. Mrs. Rigg isn’t here. She’s at the post office.” She sounded subdued. I wondered if she had been told off for giving me an appointment earlier.
“That’s all right. I’m here to see you!” I rejoined heartily, and she perked up. I presented her cousin’s delivery, which turned out to be hand-knitted jumpers.
Rosalie squeaked with delight. She explained that they had been knitted by Marnie’s mother and … It doesn’t matter. I let the explanation run its course. When sweater-related words stopped coming out of Rosalie’s mouth, I confided, “My husband’s an architect,” which is true, though I would have happily lied if a different profession would have been more useful. “He has an interest in houses with towers …” That’s a lie, possibly an odd and transparent one, but—
“Oh, yes! The tower’s a popular feature. Everyone comments on it.” Then her voice lowered. “I’m sorry; I really can’t show you up there. Mrs. Rigg wasn’t happy that you …”
I waved my hand affably. “Of course. I wouldn’t want to intrude. I was just wondering about the history; has this always been an office?” Obviously not, but I hoped that if I sounded stupid she’d give me more information.
It turned out that the house had been built by a Bairstow family that had resided in it for several generations. I wondered, Could it really be this easy? Had a member of that family been the one to choose Annalise’s resting place so they could “enjoy” it daily without having to risk returning to it?
But Rosalie’s Tales of the Bairstows made that scenario seem less likely: in the seventies, the tower had been a nursery for little girl twins. Still, Charlie’s bizarre assertion that the body actually couldn’t have been buried until later opened up possibilities. “When did the building change hands?” I asked. Rigg and Loft could be one in a series of business renters, or could be descendants of a long-established partnership. Perhaps Annalise’s murder could end up blamed on the father of obnoxious Mr. Rigg; I wouldn’t mind that at all.
“Just six years ago. We used to be in St. Albans.”
“And Rigg and Loft bought it directly from the Bairstows?”
Rosalie isn’t stupid. “Is this a police question or a my-husband-is-an-architect question?”
I think I like her. “It’s an I’ll-leave-really-soon question. I just want to know the chain of ownership.”
“Mr. Rigg doesn’t like us talking about it.”
That made the information a hundred times more interesting than it was ten seconds ago. “Rosalie, please.”
She leaned forward. She whispered, “It was a boarding house.”
My eyebrows squeezed together sceptically. “Is that a euphemism?”
“No!” She looked horrified. “But Mr. Rigg likes to think of the building as a family home. He’s very family-orientated. He won’t even advise on divorce cases if the client has committed adultery.”
The fact that Mr. Rigg wouldn’t like it prompted in me an urge to run out and commit adultery immediately, but I restrained myself. “So, it was a boarding house in the eighties? Any old record books on some dusty shelf?”
“Mr. Rigg doesn’t like dust,” Rosalie said primly, eluding the actual question.
I pulled out a card with my name and information on it; crossed out the office number and circled my mobile. Before I could slip it to her, Mr. Rigg appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Rosalie?” he said, awaiting an explanation of my presence.
“Mr. Rigg, Mrs. Frohmann had some questions about the architecture. For her husband.” Rosalie was a lot sharper than I had initially given her credit for. It’s obvious why she’d glided around my police rank. I didn’t even correct her that Frohmann is my maiden name and so “Mrs.” is not appropriate with it; Mr. Rigg was clearly the kind of man who prefers women my age to be married, so she had emphasised it.
“Yes,” I agreed. “I was just wondering when it had been built and whether it had had many additions over the years.” Then I added, and this was possibly over the top: “It’s such a family-orientated building.”
Just then the phone on Rosalie’s desk gave an old-fashioned jangle. She picked it up and her smile turned from automatic to genuine. “Sorry, love! Your aunt isn’t here right now. She’s at the post office. But I know she’s looking forward to seeing you tonight.” Pause; nodding. “All right. I’ll let her know. ’Bye, dear.”
Mr. Rigg was nearly quivering with impatience. “I’d prefer you not to use the office phone for personal calls during business hours.”
“Yes, Mr. Rigg,” as if she could have stopped someone else from phoning for Cathy.
“And where is Cathy, Rosalie?”
Rosalie stiffened then forced her shoulders to relax. “Errands, Mr. Rigg. For the office.”
“It would be a better use of everyone’s time for you to take care of such things during lunch.”
“Of course. From tomorrow onward, Mr. Rigg.”
She held her bland smile in place until a door had closed behind him.
“I promise I won’t call during office hours. But you can call me anytime, day or night. I’d like to know who lived in this house.”
She nodded, and tucked my card in with Marnie’s gift of jumpers. In the right patterns, knots and tangles add up to something useful; my job depends on that.
Chapter 6
Annalise Williams, second session, recorded and transcribed by Dr. Laurie Ambrose
I did it. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did.
There was this nice guy. I’d only talked to him a few times, and then last night I told him. He responded just like I knew he would: he was tender, and attentive, and angry on my behalf. When I told him that the man had never been identified or caught, you would have thought he was going to break his fingers he was making a fist so tight. I told him that it was all right, that it was a long time ago. He touched my hair and said that no one should ever be hurt like that. He just accepted me as damaged and scared and hurt and very brave, and held me. He made the bad feelings go away.
They are my own bad feelings. I was never hurt like Annalise, but I feel bad things just the same. Everybody does. Victims just feel them bigger, and with more words to justify and describe them, and get to be fussed over, while the rest of us haven’t earned that, what with our normal, everyday, boring “bad feelings.” God. It’s like when people with shitty jobs don’t make enough to live on, but they make too much to qualify for benefits. I’m too lucky to qualify for sympathy, right? For understanding? Only real victims get that. The rest of us are supposed to take care of those poor victims. We don’t get taken care of ourselves. We’re not sad enough. God.
I’m going to see him again, on Wednesday. We’ll talk about other things. We already have talked about other things: work and pets and parents, the usual. His father is dead. Then it was my turn to comfort him. See how it’s fair? I don’t just take. He’s lucky to know me, just as lucky as I am to know him.
He says he likes my long hair. He pushed a bit of it behind my ear. That’s bold, don’t you think? A man doesn’t touch a woman if he’s not interested.
Are you married, Dr. Ambrose? You’ve got a pretty ring, but it’s not the
usual diamond-engagement-and-wedding-band set. Why is that? Could he not afford it? … Oh. I thought that I could talk about whatever I wanted.
So long as it’s about myself and my own experiences? Fine. I’ll tell you more about my new friend. He’s a bit younger than me but mature for his age. Do you remember being young, Dr. Ambrose? I know it was a long time ago… . Uh-oh, shame on me, that’s about you again.
You know what? I had a great time with him last night, such a good time that I almost didn’t come to this appointment today. I thought, why bother? But I decided that it was important to talk to you. I decided that you needed to know that I did it, I told him and don’t regret it. I’m even a little angry that you almost took this away from me.
People say “crutch” like that’s a bad thing. Crutches are great! Have you ever sprained your ankle or broken your leg? You’re not going to tell me, are you. Well, I have. I broke my ankle skiing and, shit, I fucking loved my crutches. Without them I couldn’t do anything, but with them I could get around. You have something against me getting around? Why not use the crutch that’s just right in front of me? It makes me feel good to tell part of Annalise’s story as if it’s my own, and it doesn’t hurt anyone. Can you name one person who gets hurt by me telling this little white lie?
No, not him. I don’t accept that. We were closer after we talked. It opened up big emotions between us in a contained and controlled way. He’s happy. He wants to see me again. You can’t argue with that. You can’t say he’s hurt. He’s coming back for more.
Maybe, just maybe, if we were to get married and have babies and years down the road he discovers that I lied to him he might be hurt, but I really don’t think that’s what’s ahead, do you?
Sometimes I do wonder to myself, what would I be telling in its place, if I didn’t have this perfect story all prepared? Is there something better to say, something more important, that’s being hidden by this? That opportunity cost is the only downside I can think of, but I haven’t dug up any hidden secret yet. If I had my own story, my own molestation or whatever, I promise I would be telling that. There’s nothing there. The fact is, everyone has insecurities and anger and even fears, but only those who’ve been through a trauma are allowed to admit them. So I give myself that permission. Telling Annalise’s story gives me the opportunity to be honest about how I really am inside. I’m being more truthful in telling her story than I would be by putting on my happy-perfect date-face.
Look for Her Page 7