by Lily Ashton
“You see what I mean, Alice,” said Devi. “It can happen to anyone.”
Alice supposed it could. But Cheryl did not have Devi’s name and global profile, nor her bank of resources. “Hey wait a minute. Desperate measures?” said Alice. “Like what?”
“Alice.” Christian pulled what Alice supposed to be his corporate client face. “I can’t tell you any more.”
“It doesn’t sound good, though,” said Joe. He looked at Alice and raised his eyebrows.
“It’s not, and it’s further complicated by the loan she had from Nick’s company.”
“Nick’s company lent Cheryl money?” Devi and Alice said together. They looked at each other.
“I can’t give you the details, but seeing as you’ve all ganged up on me … Cheryl asked Nick for a loan. Instead of giving her money from his personal account, he took it out of the ad agency’s account and asked her to pay it back quickly. She’d borrowed money from him in the past and – she was a bit vague on this – I got the impression she hadn’t paid it all back.” Christian placed his hands on his knees. “Anyway, when Cheryl didn’t pay, Nick got aggressive and threatened to sue her.”
Devi opened her mouth, but threw the loose end of her scarf over her shoulder first, as if giving herself time to find the right words. “Nick would never have been aggressive towards a woman.” She pouted. “That’s so out of character. And threatening to sue a family member over money? I just don’t believe it.”
Christian held up both hands. “You wanted to know what Cheryl said and that’s what she said. Though I’m not surprised Nick wanted the money repaid quickly – after all he shouldn’t have used company funds in the first place.”
“And to make sure his business partner didn’t find out?” said Alice.
“Perhaps. But I think he was just being gentlemanly and trying to save Cheryl’s blushes. She was obviously desperate if she had to resort to borrowing money from Nick.”
Alice looked at the others, then took a third biscuit. Nobody was counting!
“So, Cheryl borrows money from her brother-in-law, he asks for it back and then he dies,” said Joe.
“And if that doesn’t give Cheryl the perfect motive for murder,” said Alice, “I don’t know what does.”
Christian slapped a hand against his thigh. “You see, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d twist it into something it wasn’t. And now you’ve turned her into a murderer.”
“Christian, I—”
“It’s typical.” Christian stood up. “Alice, I just can’t have an adult conversation with you.”
And with that, Christian stormed out the door.
Chapter 18
A pair of white tails bobbed along Renton Hall’s driveway. The rabbits ducked under a hedge when Alice stepped out of the Defender, re-emerging near the house. Concentrating on following their journey, Alice missed the step into the house and tripped against the front door.
Inside, she went in search of Eleanor. There was nobody downstairs and the conservatory door was bolted, but she heard voices as she climbed the staircase. She went into the bedroom suite at the back of the house, where Gina was studying her phone. Wearing a black trouser suit and a bowed white silk shirt, she took off her glasses and put them in her jacket pocket.
“Ah, you are just in time, Alice. Come and see the colour I’ve chosen for the bedroom.”
Gina took Alice’s arm and guided her from what would be the lounge section of the suite, through an archway and into the bedroom itself. A decorator was rolling paint onto the walls.
“What do you think? ‘Robin’ – it is a good colour, no?”
Alice peered at the striking yellow on the wall. “I think you mean canary.”
Gina shrugged. “Qualsiasi cosa tu dica. Whatever you say.”
“But I do like it.”
“There will be a big double bed here.” Gina turned to the side wall and spread her arms. “So, you can see out of this bay window and onto the lake. It will be a beautiful room. The curtains and bedcovers will be peacock blue; I get that bird right, no?” Gina smiled.
“It sounds lovely.”
A mobile buzzed from the other side of the archway and Gina ran for it. Alice retrieved her bags and headed to the attic, where she found Eleanor shutting the cabinet that housed the guns and pill boxes. Eleanor stepped away from the cabinet and her cheeks flushed a little as she fiddled with a button on her shirt. Wilson had made himself comfortable on the chaise longue.
“Good Morning Alice. I wasn’t expecting you so early. I was just checking something.”
Alice would liked to have asked what she was checking, but questioning a boss who owed her money was not the smartest of moves. “I’m going to get started on that wardrobe in the corner today.”
“In there are the contents of the cabinet of curiosities that Wilfred kept downstairs in the library; bits and pieces he’d collected over the years. It was still there when I was a child. There was a sheep’s skull I remember. It used to terrify me and I wouldn’t go into the library after dark.” Eleanor smiled.
“It sounds fascinating.” Alice put her bag on the desk. “By the way, I was walking through the wood the other day and I discovered a pet cemetery.”
“Oh, that’s the Trevelyans’. It’s been there for years; Nick and I used to play in it. Bill shooed us away one day, but we went back when he wasn’t around.”
“I found a statue of a dog there, a greyhound.”
“Oh, that ghastly thing. Bill had it made to commemorate a special greyhound he’d owned. Not that I remember seeing a dog like that around.”
A shout from outside took Eleanor to the window. “That’s the man about the drains.”
“I thought the wood was part of your property, but you say it belongs to Bill Trevelyan?”
“That’s right. Funny, Nick asked me the same question recently. He wanted to put in an outdoor swimming pool and he was looking at a spot past Jeremy’s snug. As you saw from the plans, the boundary lies along the Renton Hall edge of the wood. But Bill has always let us wander through the woods whenever we wanted.”
“Talking of the plans, how did you get on with Gina?” said Alice. “Did she agree to hang them in the entrance hall?”
Eleanor swung an arm across her body. “I’m trying to think of a way to hang them without asking her.”
“Ah. Perhaps that’s best.” Alice watched her foot slide across the floor. “On something else, Eleanor … my fee. Would you mind—”
“Of course, I’ll sort it out this morning.” Eleanor rubbed her hands. “Well, I must go and see about the drains. I brought you a fan from home, by the way. It gets hot up here and you can’t open the windows anymore. If you need another one, let me know.”
Alice looked after Eleanor as she disappeared down the stairs, Wilson trailing behind her. Then she crept over to the mahogany cabinet. Keeping her hands locked together behind her back – she was not going to make that mistake again – Alice peered through the glass. The service revolver was not there – it would be locked up in the evidence room at the police station. But otherwise, everything was back to normal. The shattered shelf had been replaced and the collection was back in its original place. So what had Eleanor Carberry been doing?
Alice had not heard from Nathan Salisbury since their meeting, which she assumed meant he could not confirm her as a suspect. Though she knew that he would be dogged in his search for evidence. Alice could only hope that she had not said or done anything else incriminating.
She opened the wardrobe door. It was jammed with objects wrapped in bubble wrap or newspaper. She sighed and turned on the radio. She had put on a thin t-shirt and shorts, but she was already feeling flushed. Eleanor’s fan was small, but new and effective. It was also loud.
Alice reached for the objects at the top of the
wardrobe and unwrapped newspaper from the first. Inside was a handful of shells – round ones, long ones, shells with holes – and accompanying them was a little piece of card with ‘Galway Bay 1925’ written in black ink. Good man! That made the inventory a whole lot easier.
There followed a globe of the world in 1893, a test tube with a tiny lizard immersed in clear liquid, a South African calla lily flattened and dried. Then a pocket watch on a gold chain, a child’s footprint preserved in plaster of Paris, a framed piece of card covered in foreign coins. And a sheep’s skull.
Alice unwrapped a glass bottle labelled ‘Poison’, in faded red capital letters. She held it in her palm, newspaper between bottle and flesh. Was the bottle empty or full when Wilfred bought it? Alice tipped up the glass, revealing a label on the base: ‘On holiday with Edith, Broadstairs 1937’. Dearie me! Surely it wasn’t holidaying with his wife that had prompted Wilfred to buy poison!
Alice was laughing, so when she heard a male voice say, “And now for today’s other joke,” she assumed it was the radio presenter. Simon Newgate was almost at her shoulder before she realised he was there.
“An empty bottle of poison? Remind me never to accept tea at your house.” He grinned and wandered over to the plan chest. Simon put a finger through a hole where a sheep had once gazed over a verdant meadow. “Wilfred’s stuff, I assume? I seem to remember they had a few of his eccentric pieces in the library at one point.”
“There was a cabinet of curiosities there, apparently.”
“I don’t remember a whole cabinet.”
Alice turned off the radio. “I’m sure you haven’t come all the way up here to look at a sheep’s skull.”
“Not a skull, a sculpture. Nick’s father had a statue of Achilles in the dining room, which I always liked. Nick didn’t want it and he was going to give it to me. It’s up here apparently.”
Alice put down the poison bottle. “Oh, I’ve seen that.” She clicked her fingers and pointed at the desk. “It’s in that box.”
Simon lifted out a small bronze statue of the Greek god, sword in one hand, shield in the other. “Fabulous isn’t it?”
“It is. And I’m sure I recognise it from somewhere.”
“Hyde Park. This is a miniature of the one in the park.”
“Of course. The enormous statue by Hyde Park corner.” Alice nodded at the figure. “That’s some six pack he has!”
“And I bet he looked like that in real life too.”
“The Greek gods were just myths.”
“They were. But if Achilles had been a real person, he probably would have had a six pack like this!”
Simon roared with laughter, and Alice joined him.
“Anyway, enough of that.” Simon replaced the statue and tucked the box under his arm. “I need to find my bureau.”
“Is it that bureau over there?”
“No, I think it may be in the conservatory. The police asked Eleanor to clear the hayloft. After they removed Jeremy, they wanted to examine the floor or something. So, they’ve piled the furniture into the house. Poor Eleanor has now got Gina on her back about that too!”
Alice pictured the steps up to the hayloft and her discovery of Jeremy Evans’ body. She shook her head to remove the image.
“The bureau’s for my study at home. I bagged it before Jeremy could take it to auction.”
“So, you had a rummage through the furniture too?”
“The Carberry’s have always bought quality furniture. Quality everything.” Simon tailed off and looked at the box. “Luckily, I was free to pop over last Tuesday to have a look.”
When Simon headed downstairs to hunt for the bureau, Alice picked up Eleanor’s fan, holding it in front of her face. It was effective, but it only gave a small dose of relief. She would have to ask her boss for a bigger fan.
Alice opened the top drawer of the plan chest, where Eleanor had left the plans for Renton Hall. She took the first sheet out, laid it flat on the desk and traced around the boundary line with her finger. The estate was rectangular in shape, with the house at the bottom and the bulk of the land extending to the north and west. In the bottom left-hand corner of the sheet was the official Land Registry stamp, with ‘1972’ written by hand. That must have been the year that Eleanor’s father bought extra land from his neighbour.
Which meant that these was not the original plans. There had to be another sheet showing the estate when Wilfred Carberry purchased it. Alice turned over the paper and found a sticker on the back, marked ‘Dingle & Son’.
Alice looked up the company and recognised the shopfront that appeared on her screen. Dingle & Son was a property and land consultant with an office on the edge of town and they might know where to find the original plans. She would drop into their office and find out. She was getting behind with the inventory, but she needed to confirm ownership of the pet cemetery and stone dog. And besides, she was boiling.
Alice turned off the fan and made her way downstairs, where she found Simon Newgate talking to Eleanor in the conservatory. Alice smiled, thinking of their Achilles six-pack conversation. Simon was more relaxed today than he had been when Alice had met him in his office. And funnier too.
Inside the Defender, Alice gathered her hair, twisted it into a bun and secured it with a scrunchie. She was just putting the key in the ignition when in her rear-view mirror she caught sight of Simon and another man carrying a bureau out of the house.
It was only then that she registered the significance of Simon’s visit to pick out the piece of furniture. He had been in the hayloft on Tuesday the week before. The day Jeremy Evans was murdered.
Chapter 19
An old farmhouse had served as Dingle & Son’s office for fifty years, since the business had expanded and moved from Great Wheaton’s high street. The receptionist scurried away to find an available consultant, while Alice waited by the open door. Sooner than she expected, a man wearing a green tweed waistcoat marched across the reception area, stiff arms swinging in time with his steps.
“You’ve found the right spot by the door there. Jolly hot today.” He clasped Alice’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “Roger Bland. How can I help you?”
“I’m working on the Renton Hall refurbishment and we want to hang a copy of the estate plans. The ones we have are dated 1972, which is when George Carberry bought an additional block of land, but we’re after the originals. Specifically, the location plan from when Wilfred Carberry bought the estate.”
“And those won’t be the originals either. The estate would have changed many times over the years before that,” said Roger.
“I’m sure it has, but we’re only interested in the period that the Carberrys have owned the property.”
Roger nodded and pushed red framed glasses up his nose. “In that case, walk this way.”
That wouldn’t be easy, she thought, and stifled a laugh. She followed him over the stone-flagged floor and they entered a large square room with rows of filing cabinets and chests.
“This is our records room. We had it specially built fifteen years ago, as we were running out of space in the main office.”
“Is there a record of every property transaction you’ve handled?”
Roger ran a hand through thick salt and pepper hair. “Pretty much. The original Mr Dingle was fastidious about keeping records. He had big ledgers recording every sale; they’re with the Dingle family now. But he also kept copies of the contracts he drafted and spares of all the plans he worked on. Now, let’s see where Renton Hall’s papers are.”
Roger consulted a laptop on a small desk in the corner, while Alice wandered along the numbered cabinets. Dingle & Son was the oldest land consultants in the town, and its filing system held a social history of the area’s families and businesses. It witnessed their successes and failures as they bought and sold property.
“Ah,
here we are,” said Roger. “Renton Hall was bought by Mr Wilfred Carberry in May 1913, from a Mr Joshua Littledown. And the records are in cabinet five.”
He retrieved a large brown envelope from the filing cabinet. “We’ll take it into to my office.”
Roger tipped out the contents of the envelope onto a table: a scroll of white paper tied with a red ribbon, together with a large sheet folded several times.
“This is the one we need.” Roger stretched out the sheet, flattening it with his palm. “Here we go.”
Alice put both hands on the table and leaned over the sheet, tracing her finger along the black line marking Renton Hall’s boundary. “This isn’t it,” she said. “This is just another copy of the plans we already have.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely.” Alice turned over the sheet and pressed a finger against the ‘1972’ written in black ink.
“So it is.” Roger rubbed his chin. “This needs further investigation.” He pressed keys on his own laptop. “Yes, we do have the original plans, it looks like they’ve been filed in the wrong place. They’re in the other room.”
Roger appeared a few minutes later and unrolled another sheet. Alice traced around the boundary. With the exception of the new land acquired in the nineteen seventies, the boundary of 1913 was exactly the same as on the 1972 plans. That would mean that the wood and pet cemetery had always belonged to Bill Trevelyan.
“It seems our record keeping is not as fastidious as the original Mr Dingle’s.” Roger grimaced. “But I’m glad we could help in the end.”
As Alice drove home, a rumble from her stomach reminded her that she had not had lunch, so she turned into the high street. She would have the pizza she had missed the day before.
Emilio sat Alice at the same table she and Christian had occupied at the opening. She thought of her brother and how their meeting had been going so well. He was relaxed and happy, he seemed pleased to see her. And then he’d snapped. Alice put a hand to her head. She was too hungry now to work out Christian. She took in each of the Gambi family photographs on the walls. There were enough pictures to be interesting, but not so many as to be overwhelming. Sensitively framed, sensibly spaced and hung at the right height. Good job!