Sausage Hall

by Christina James

  “What? Oh, you mean my other little jobs. It’s OK. I did the ice-cream vans this morning, and there’s only one ambulance at the garage today. I can go down there after you’ve left.”

  She continued to hover. Tim broke the impasse by moving back towards the front door.

  “I’ll fetch my colleagues now,” he said. “And, as you kindly suggested, some tea would be very welcome.”

  Jackie Briggs smiled relief. She turned to head for the kitchen, slightly ungainly in heels that were higher than she was used to.

  Five minutes later, Tim and Giash Chakrabati and Verity Tandy had descended into the cellar, bearing hot mugs of tea with them. Giash produced overalls and plastic overshoes from the holdall that he’d slung over his shoulder. “Hairnet, anyone?” he asked.

  “I don’t think we need to go that far,” said Tim. Verity Tandy looked stern. “If you think I’m going to mess up my hair, you can think again. I spent ten minutes doing it like this this morning.”

  “Very nice, too,” said Giash. She beamed. Tim noted with approval that Giash had an easy way of being around Verity. Her prickliness seemed to dissolve under his influence. “How are we going to tackle this, Boss?” Giash injected just enough irony into the appellation to make it funny rather than creepy.

  “I think we should move that old red carpet that’s been hung over this pile of stuff here to see exactly what there is beneath it. We’ll have to be careful, because I don’t want it to fall on the area that Ms Gardner’s marked out, where the skeletons were dug up. It’s filthy, too, and likely to generate a dust cloud. We’d probably be best off wearing masks. We’ll finish this tea first.”

  Giash duly fished three masks out of his bag and handed them out. They drank the tea and put them on.

  “Go over to the far end, Giash,” said Tim, “and see if you can get a purchase on the carpet over there. I’ll lift it from this side. PC Tandy, if you could just stand between me and the cordoned-off area, to make sure that I don’t step on the soil where the paving has been removed.”

  Tim and Giash worked in unison to shift the carpet. As Tim had expected, it weighed a ton. As they lifted it, clouds of dust rose with it. The carpet itself smelt foul – worse than musty, there was some underlying stench that Tim couldn’t quite define. Between them, they managed to hoist it into the air and then double it back on itself, so that there was just room enough to lay it on the floor to one side of the excavation.

  Underneath it was a mishmash of furniture and large-ish artefacts – as well as two wardrobes and a Dutch dresser, Tim could see brass pots, an old-fashioned push-chair, an enamel portable bidet, an old treadle sewing machine and several iron bedsteads.

  “I’m not sure how we’re going to work through these with that carpet sitting there,” he said. “There’s not going to be space to take them out and examine them.”

  “If we fold the carpet again, you could pass me some of the smaller items and I’ll take them into the next room,” said Verity Tandy.

  Tim thought about it and nodded. He was impressed: he had not expected an intelligent contribution from her.

  They devoted half an hour or so to passing to Verity the more portable items. Tim carried the treadle sewing machine through himself and Giash moved some small tables. By the time they’d finished, the centre of the floor in the middle room was completely covered with small pieces of furniture and other household goods.

  “Work through that lot and see if you can find anything interesting,” Tim said to Verity. “Some of those things have got drawers in them, or other places that could conceal stuff.”

  She seemed almost over-pleased to have been given this task.

  “Certainly. What sort of ‘stuff’ am I looking for?”

  “Documents, I suppose. Or anything else that might give us a clue. Anything unusual, that you wouldn’t expect to find here.”

  Giash grinned.

  “That either gives her plenty of scope, or not much at all. I’m not sure what she could expect to find in a place like this. Almost anything seems possible.”

  “Point taken,” said Tim. “Just use your discretion, will you, Verity? I’m sure you’ll pick up on it if you find something that could provide a link to the skeletons, or whoever put them here.”

  He turned away from her too soon to see how pleased she was that he’d called her by her first name.

  “What does that leave for us, now?” he asked Giash.

  “A whole load of furniture. It’s not all from the same period. The mahogany pieces look to me as if they’re Victorian. The dresser and some of the other things – that table, for example, and those high stools – date from later. They look continental – Scandinavian possibly. The mahogany stuff is English, I’m sure. I’m not sure what era those hideous red button-backed chairs belong to.”

  “Quite an authority, aren’t you? But you’re right – there are two lots of furniture down here. That fits with what Kevan de Vries said: that some of it belonged to his grandfather, some of it to the old lady who owned the house before him.”

  “So the earlier stuff could have been in the house when the skeletons – or the people to whom they belonged – first came here?”

  “Yes, but it probably wasn’t in the cellar then. It’s worth working through it, nevertheless. I’m guessing that whoever put it down here will have gone through all the drawers and cupboards at the time – I certainly would have – but not everyone is curious about the past. And even if they did look, they may have missed something.”

  “There’s something funny about all of this,” said Giash.

  “Well, I agree with you there. It’s not every day that you find three skeletons and five forged passports in a place like this. But I assume you’re referring to something specific that you’ve just noticed?”

  “Yes. Two things, in fact. One is that this furniture is remarkably free of dust. The other is that some of the earlier stuff is in front of the later stuff: so it must have been moved at least once.”

  Tim was unconvinced.

  “You may be right, but I’m not sure it’s of any significance. That carpet was doing its job pretty well. And whoever brought the second lot of furniture down probably had to move what was already here in order to fit it all in.”

  Giash shrugged.

  “Just a thought,” he said.

  “We don’t need to bother with the tables, stools and small chairs,” said Tim. “They won’t tell us anything. We’ll move them out of the way and look through the drawers of these cabinets and dressers first, and then move them as much as we can to get to those two wardrobes at the back.”

  “OK.”

  Giash began stacking the chairs in a pile in the far corner. One of the tables was gate-legged and folded up neatly. He lifted it quite easily and placed it beside the chairs. The other was made of metal, hideously topped with turquoise formica. He dragged it across to the corner as far as it would go.

  “Let me move those chairs out again,” said Tim. “We can probably stack them on this, if we can push it right up against the wall.”

  “OK,” Giash said again. “I’ll help you.” He divided the pile of chairs into two and, taking one of them, leant back against the wall so that Tim could remove the ones that he’d left on the table.

  “Ouch!” he said. He put the chairs down on the floor in front of him and drew his hand across the back of his head. When he examined it, he saw that whatever it was he’d bumped his head against had drawn blood.

  “Are you all right?” said Tim.

  “Yes, I think so. I’ve just cut the back of my head on something. It’s stinging a bit, but I think that it’s just a slight graze.”

  “Let me see,” said Tim. He’d meant that Giash should let him look at the wound, but instead the PC stepped to one side so that Tim could get closer to the wall. It was very dark in this par
t of the cellar – the low wattage light bulb did not reach into the outer shadows – but they’d brought a torch. Tim shone it on the spot where Giash had been standing. He saw that a vicious-looking hook had been driven into the masonry there; it was rusty with age, though the metal wasn’t flaking, as if it might have been used fairly recently. Turning the torch beam along the wall, Tim could make out two similar hooks, forming a row with a couple of metres between them.

  “Good God!” he said. “I wonder what those were for.”

  Giash turned round to see for himself and touched his scalp gingerly. It was still bleeding, though not copiously.

  “I think you need to get an antiseptic wipe for that,” said Tim. “You’ll have some in the car, won’t you?”

  “I’ll go for you,” said Verity, suddenly appearing from beyond the archway that led to the second room. “I’ll put a dressing on it, too.”

  She made for the stairs. They could hear the scuffle of her footsteps in their plastic overshoes as she climbed them. The scuffling ceased as she reached the top of the flight and opened the door that led into Laurieston’s hallway.

  “Hello,” said a voice. “I think we met briefly on Monday?”

  “Good afternoon, Mr Sentance,” said Verity. Standing out of sight in the cellar below, Tim guessed that she’d deliberately raised her voice in order to warn him and Giash of Tony Sentance’s arrival. “Can I help you, sir?” she added, still speaking very distinctly.

  “That’s sweet of you, but I’m really looking for your boss. DI Yates, I mean. I’m assuming that he is your boss?”

  “Not directly, sir, but I’m assisting him at the moment. Shall I tell him that you’re here?”

  “If he’s down there, as Jackie’s led me to believe, I can announce myself perfectly well. You may run along on whatever errand he’s sent you on.”

  Tim smiled in spite of himself. He’d have given a lot to have seen Verity’s expression at that moment. If she deemed Sentance’s patronising comment worthy of a reply, Tim did not hear what it was. It was evident that Verity had continued on her way, because Sentance’s heavy-soled brogue shoes could first be heard and then seen clattering down the steps. He reached the bottom as Tim emerged from the shadows to greet him. Tim saw his face for a split second before he composed it into an ingratiating smile. He might have expected to read anger there, or perhaps an exasperated kind of languor. Instead, what he had observed fleetingly but very clearly etched into Tony Sentance’s countenance was unmistakably fear.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Sentance. We weren’t expecting you.”

  “Harry Briggs told me that you’d asked if you could come here again and, since Mr Kevan is otherwise engaged this afternoon, I thought I’d come to check that everything was all right.”

  “You didn’t come at Mr de Vries’ specific request, then?”

  “I . . . no. I’ve not spoken to Mr Kevan today. He’s preoccupied, but I know if he’d thought of it, he would have asked me to be here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Good grief, is that blood on your hand?” said Sentance, directing the question at Giash and, Tim thought, hamming up his feeling of concern quite considerably.

  “PC Chakrabati has grazed his scalp on a hook in the wall. It’s just a surface wound, but we’ll dress it to be on the safe side. That hook’s a murderous-looking thing, though. You don’t happen to know why it’s there, do you?”

  Tim had waited for Sentance to come out with his customary mantra: that Laurieston was not his house, so he could not be expected to know the whys and wherefores of what had gone on there. He was therefore mildly surprised when Sentance said in an unusually co-operative voice:

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  Tim looked at him. Evidently not a master of timing, ­Sentance was obviously trying to achieve a bit of éclat; probably, Tim reflected, to steer the conversation about whether Kevan de Vries wanted him there or not.

  “Well, go on,” said Tim. “Enlighten us. We’re all ears!”

  “Very well. I think that Mr Kevan may have told you that his grandfather bought this house from an old lady. Her name was Mrs Jacobs. Jackie lived in the village at the time – has always lived in the village, in fact – and she, like Mr Kevan, just about remembers the old woman. Mrs Jacobs had a housekeeper, a Mrs Izatt, who was also Jackie’s grandmother. Jackie says that she didn’t get on particularly well with Mrs Jacobs, who I gather was in any case a bit gaga by then, but of course she talked to the old girl in the evenings and found out quite a lot about her early life and this place. Mrs Jacobs’ husband was much older than she was. He didn’t actually have this house built. His mother bought it for him when he was a young man, presumably after she herself was widowed. It was almost new then. Apparently the dowager Mrs Jacobs – if I may call her that – had an eye for a bargain, and bought this house from a butcher who had built it for himself and then gone bankrupt. I’ve reason to believe that this is true, because the older locals here still call this place ‘Sausage Hall’. I suppose the nickname’s been passed down through the generations.”

  “That’s fascinating,” said Tim. “Thank you.” Giash – who had been quite bored by all of this – threw him a sidelong look and realised that there was no shred of irony implied in his words. Tim delighted in historical details of this kind.

  “So you’re saying that these hooks were probably put there by the butcher?”

  Sentance tried to look unassuming.

  “It stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s certainly a possible explanation,” said Tim. “Do you know anything else about Mrs Jacobs’ husband?”

  “Only that he was a gentleman farmer who never actually got his hands dirty – not on English soil, anyway. He spent much of his youth exploring, I believe. That’s why he married so late.”

  “Did he have any children? Any descendants that we might possibly be able to trace?”

  “I believe there was a son, whose name was Gordon. He was in late middle age when Mr Kevan was a boy, so if he were still alive, he’d be very old now. It’s unlikely, I think. Why don’t you come upstairs for some tea? We can wait until Mr Kevan comes back, then. If he knows any more, I’m sure that he’ll be happy to talk to you about it.”

  “Thank you, but we’ve had tea already and Mr de Vries particularly asked me to have finished for the day by the time he returns with his wife.” Tim looked at his watch. “We’ve got less than two hours left now, so if you’ll forgive me, we’ll press on.”

  “Oh, but let me help you put those things back where they came from. We can have it shipshape again in no time at all.”

  “I’m afraid we haven’t finished yet,” said Tim. “We want to move all of the furniture out to look at it, even those big wardrobes at the back. As you see, we have some way to go.” Nice try, he thought. But why was Tony Sentance so keen on getting them out of the cellar? He should guess that that would only make them the more determined to examine it properly.

  “Gosh, you have got your work cut out. I think you’re being a little ambitious, but I’ll leave you to it. Give me a shout if you need me. I’ll be waiting in the kitchen with Jackie. I hope your head gets better soon,” he threw over his shoulder at Giash, as he began to plod up the stairs again. He almost collided with Verity on her way back down, clutching the first aid kit from the car. There was some awkward manoeuvring on the stairs as these two large and ungainly people squeezed past each other, which Tim secretly relished. Then Sentance was gone, but within easy reach, as he had himself pointed out. Knowing that he was now at Laurieston made the house feel very oppressive indeed.

  Thirty-One

  Joanna shakes the hand of the housemaster. He opens the car door for her and she gets in in her usual way, seating herself first and then swivelling round her legs with her customary elegance. She has not allowed illness to compromise her standards
. I feel a rush of pity and tender love for her. My lip trembles, but then I see the odious little man looking across her. He is grinning – whether at my discomfort or because he has just uttered some valedictory witticism, I can’t tell. If he did speak, I wasn’t listening to him. I turn on the ignition and rev up the engine. Reluctantly, he slams shut the door for Joanna and stands back. As we draw away, I look back in the mirror and see that he is waving like a maniac.

  I give Joanna a sidelong glance. Her face is long, her cheeks sunken, her eyes somehow smaller and more receded into their sockets. Her expression is set, to show me how angry she still is, but what she most conveys is her sheer exhaustion. Of course, we’ve both known for some time that Joanna has only a few months left, but it suddenly dawns on me how close she now is to death. She barely seems strong enough to last the night, perhaps too fragile even to take the journey back to Laurieston. She is living on willpower alone; the skull beneath the flesh is gaining ground by the hour.

  “You look tired. When we get home, you must rest. Spend tomorrow in bed. The flight has worn you out.”

  “Rest isn’t going to help me now. In any case, I don’t feel any worse than I did when I was lolling around in St Lucia. I’m glad to be back. Nothing’s more important than making sure that Archie is as OK as he can be. I must have been mad to allow you to persuade me to go away in the first place.”

  “It was a joint decision,” I remind her, “and one based partly on what we thought would be best for Archie. If you remember, we didn’t think it would be good for him to see you . . .” I pause, searching for words that will not devastate.

  “On my way out, you mean?” Her tone is bleak, her look savage.

  “I was going to say, looking ill.” I know this sounds feeble and insincere. I look at her again. She’s staring straight ahead, unseeing. I feel for her hand. She snatches it away.