The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit)

by Gyland, Henriette

  It was Sweetman’s turn to look surprised. He raised his bushy white eyebrows. ‘A post-mortem? What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Foul play.’

  ‘I see.’ He leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his weight. ‘Usually only a relative can request a post-mortem – and you’re not a relative in that sense – unless the death is considered traumatic, unusual or unexpected. Then the doctor signing the death certificate will instigate it. Your grandmother was old, and she was ill. Hardly unexpected.’

  ‘But it was so sudden.’

  ‘Death always is for those who have trouble accepting facts.’

  Helen glared at him. For a family solicitor he was taking a lot of liberties. Maybe she ought to just sack him. Instead she decided to tell him about the syringe and the confrontation in Ruth’s office.

  ‘Letitia wanted to get rid of her. She thought Aggie was losing it, and Ruth, well, for some reason she’s always had a bitter relationship with her mother.’

  And somehow everything comes back to me, she thought.

  ‘Mrs Ransome always knew you’d come right in the end.’ Sweetman smiled grimly. ‘Try to persuade one of your aunts, although if they’re involved, as you suggest, they could just refuse, and that’d be that. Unless you have some sort of leverage.’

  ‘I understand.’

  She had just the thing which might help persuade one of them.

  Helen hadn’t been to Ruth’s house since she was five. She didn’t remember the actual house nor her reasons for being there, but what stood out in her mind was stumbling upon Ruth weeping into a tea towel in the kitchen.

  Alarmed, she’d run back into the drawing room. ‘Mummy, Auntie Ruth has hurt herself. She’s crying.’

  Her mother ran a hand over Helen’s hair. ‘Is she? Oh, dear.’ Mimi looked at Aggie and Auntie Letitia, then Uncle Jeremy, who turned away.

  ‘Someone needs to cuddle her.’

  No one said anything, and Helen had a nasty feeling she often had when the grown-ups were around, that they knew something she didn’t. Frowning, she went back into the kitchen and patted Auntie Ruth on the back awkwardly.

  ‘Where does it hurt?’ she asked. ‘Would you like me to blow on it?’

  Auntie Ruth simply stared at her in a way which told her she’d done the wrong thing, then sobbed into the tea towel again while Helen’s chest hurt as if someone had punched her in it.

  Years later she’d learned the source of Ruth’s unhappiness: her inability to have children. Her husband having an affair with Mimi must have made things so much worse. A small part of her hated Ruth for rejecting her when her mother died, another part understood it. Reluctantly.

  Ruth opened the door in her dressing gown, an old blue towelling robe remarkably tattered for someone so wealthy. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red as if she’d been crying or hadn’t slept.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘What about? I thought we’d done talking.’

  ‘Aggie,’ said Helen.

  Ruth sighed. ‘You’d better come in, then.’ She led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house and flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  Her aunt switched the kettle off again with another sigh.

  ‘But you have some. Don’t mind me.’

  Ruth shook her head and pulled out a kitchen chair. ‘Talking about her won’t bring her back.’

  Helen sat down opposite her. ‘I’d like a post-mortem done on Aggie.’

  ‘A post-mortem? What on earth for?’

  ‘I don’t think she died of natural causes.’

  Ruth covered her eyes with her hand and rubbed her brow as if to massage away a headache. ‘Helen, please …’

  ‘You and Letitia wanted to get rid of her.’

  ‘Not in that sense.’

  ‘And I found your cardigan with a syringe in it. What do you think will happen if I tell the police that?’

  Ruth looked up. Her face, with yesterday’s make-up still embedded in her wrinkles, seemed suddenly ancient. ‘I may have wanted my mother dead a million times, but it was just something I said. People do, you know. They don’t mean it. I never quite forgave her for … well, her lack of understanding. I just wanted to be a wife and mother, not some high-flying company executive. And when that dream fell by the wayside, she just brushed my feelings aside as if they were unimportant.

  ‘Go ahead, tell the police,’ she went on, ‘but Mrs Sanders can back me up that I helped Mother with her insulin sometimes. She told me the nurse was being too rough with her, but I think she just wanted my company and didn’t want to ask because it’d make her look weak. So I went along with it and accepted this was her roundabout way of apologising.’

  What could she say to that? Ruth had a point. Aggie had possessed an uncanny ability to be both direct and subtle at the same time.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ruth asked suddenly. ‘When was the last time you ate? Would you like me to make you a sandwich? Or I can heat up some soup. You look like you could do with it.’

  ‘I don’t want a sandwich.’

  Ruth touched her hand. ‘I know it’s hard for you to accept she’s gone, but a post-mortem isn’t going to help you.’

  ‘I get all her shares,’ said Helen pointedly. ‘Sweetman told me.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Letitia will.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she’ll be bloody furious.’ Ruth laughed. ‘She might agree to a post-mortem but it’ll be because she thinks you had something to do with it.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, crazy, isn’t it? We’re all crazy.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘That’s because you grew up away from all of it. Small mercies, I suppose.’

  ‘There’s something else I need to talk to you about.’ Digging into her rucksack, Helen pulled out the roll of chamois leather and unwrapped it. Ruth blanched.

  ‘This knife is the twin of the one they say Fay used to kill my mother. It disappeared around the time my mother was murdered. So did the murder weapon. I don’t think Fay did it, so perhaps you’d like to explain what this was doing in your grandfather clock, and where you took it from?’

  Ruth sat still as a statue with her hands in her lap. Helen could have told her there were two more knives like this one, but she wanted to see her sweat.

  Finally Ruth said, ‘You really don’t like me very much, do you? Think me capable of the most terrible things.’

  ‘Isn’t everyone? Capable, I mean.’

  ‘I suppose so, but why you think I did it when everyone knows there are three more knives like this one, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Who’s “everyone”?’

  ‘Me, Letitia, Aggie. Your mum’s friends. Loads of people. The story goes that those paper knives belonged to a Russian tsar. It’s not something you forget. Everyone also knows your uncle doesn’t keep the best company, and since he has two of the knives, well …’

  ‘Where did you get it? Did you take it from my mother’s house after she died?’

  Ruth sent her a speculative look. ‘If I tell you, will you promise me not to jump to conclusions? I didn’t take it from your mother’s house. I found it at Ransome’s, tucked away in the corner of the packaging hall behind some old ledgers.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘I told you not to jump to conclusions,’ Ruth said when she saw Helen’s expression. ‘It could be that your mother dropped her own knife there by mistake, although why she should bring it to work with her I’ve no idea. Then there was Mother. She and Mimi got on well, but they’d recently had a set-to, over what I don’t know. She could easily have taken it for spite. As for Letitia, she was close to your uncle, and when I suspected your mother had used him as a free sperm donor, I thought my sister may have taken revenge for that. That’s why I took the knife. They are my family after all.’ She made a noise
halfway between a sneer and a snort. ‘I needn’t have worried about Letitia, though, because she quickly found another man to amuse herself with.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, just one of our shareholders. Some chap named Moody. He was married, and the affair didn’t last long.’

  Ruth didn’t notice Helen jump at the name. Moody. Again.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Will you tell the police?’

  Helen still had DI Whitehouse’s card in her wallet. Call me if you find anything, no matter how insignificant. Except she didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle. No way was she making a fool of herself in front of the Cream of the Met again. She’d keep digging.

  But she didn’t want Ruth to know that. ‘What’s the point? The knife belonged to my mother, and now it’s been returned to me. The rest is in the past.’

  Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. When Helen left, they embraced awkwardly. ‘Come and see me some time.’

  ‘I will.’

  She left Ruth in her big empty house, to her aimless life. Her obsession with her childlessness seemed to have pushed everything else to one side, but surely there was more to life than having babies? Things like friendships, travel. A dog maybe. It saddened her that Ruth couldn’t see it.

  Back home she dumped her rucksack on her bed and flung herself down on the sofa in the kitchen. The big house was quiet, almost watchful, without even Lee creeping about. It gave her the emotional space to brood over Aggie’s death and her complex, bitter family, which should have pleased her. Instead it was as if the walls moved in on her, squeezing her chest so she couldn’t breathe.

  Shaking off the feeling, she fetched her wallet and headed for the market. As soon as she stepped under the metal arch, she was bombarded with noise, colours and materialistic gaiety, and the numbness, which had started to spread inside her, slowly bled away.

  She bought some fruit and a piece of fish for a pie. By the refreshment stall the yummy mummies were out in force, but this time she didn’t begrudge them their cooing, well-fed babies. Ruth’s unhealthy focus had cured her of that.

  An older guy was manning Jason’s stall. Disappointed, she turned away. It would have been nice to lean into him and feel his strong arms around her, for him to take away some of the pain by just being there, but she was so used to dealing with things on her own that she figured it would keep.

  Instead she wandered aimlessly for a bit, then stopped to chat with Winston. He gave her the low-down on the local gossip. New stalls opening up, the coolest place to hang, who’d been arrested. She let it wash over her and just enjoyed the sound of his sing-song Caribbean lilt.

  ‘What you done with old Fay?’ he asked.

  This startled her. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then how come she sleeping rough now?’

  ‘Fay’s sleeping rough? Where?’

  ‘In da park,’ he said. ‘Where else would a body sleep rough?’

  Helen could think of a thousand other places: shop doorways, bus stops, dark alleys. ‘Which park?’

  ‘The one ’bout half an hour from here, on the two feet that God gave you.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  Winston rolled his eyes. ‘What planet you come from? She’s unhappy.’

  Helen wanted to ask more, but Winston had turned his full attention to a customer and was joking and chatting. Absent-mindedly she felt the fabrics hanging from the roof of his stall – the cottons, the woollens, the silks (hah!) – a kaleidoscope of colours and a wealth of textures.

  Finally he turned his attention back to her. ‘Well? You fingering or buying?’

  She found the park easily enough, a typical suburban park big enough to have its own modest lake, and tracking down Fay could be tricky. She might not be here at all. Helen traversed the park from the north end towards the tube, which ran across the park at the other end, looking to both sides to see if she could spot her.

  At the end was a playground behind a low metal fence, kitted out with swings, brightly-coloured climbing frames and a rubbery surface to cushion any falls. Under the watchful eye of their mothers a hoard of children were playing, their young voices shrill over the din from the train passing overhead. Outside the fence was a row of benches, and Helen spotted a familiar figure.

  It made sense. Playing children would be a natural magnet for Fay.

  She slid down beside her. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You okay?’

  Fay didn’t answer. Instead she clutched a handful of faded photographs in her lap. Stupid question, really.

  ‘You know who I am, I suppose.’

  ‘Mimi’s daughter. I always wondered what became of you. Have you come to take your revenge?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I think I understand now what happened back then.’

  Fay gave a dry laugh. ‘Then you understand a lot more than I do.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the dog owner.’

  ‘What dog owner?’

  ‘There was a man with a dog that morning on the Common. I remembered him, and I managed to find him. Through a personal ad in the local paper.’

  ‘How clever of you.’ Fay smiled suddenly. ‘Now you mention it, I do remember a dog that morning when I … when your mother …’ She trailed off. They both knew what came next.

  ‘Do you remember anything else?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Not really. It’s so long ago, and my brain was pretty addled.’

  ‘Not even going for a pee behind a tree?’

  ‘The dog man told you that? Oh, god, how embarrassing!’ Her attention returned to the photos in her lap, straightening out one which had become crumpled. Then her gaze settled on the children in the playground, and her expression pierced Helen to the bone.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here. You’re just torturing yourself.’

  ‘I can’t help it. I lost so much. My life. My kids.’

  ‘We’ll find them. Okay?’

  Fay shook her head. ‘It’s too late. They’re grown up now, they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.’

  ‘You don’t know that until you’ve tried.’ She paused. ‘You know, maybe we can get some of it back.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By trying to piece it all together. If you don’t remember what happened on the Common, can you remember what happened before you got there?’

  Fay was silent for a while. ‘Well, I was following her around a lot. Despite the restraining order I’d be parked outside your house, or near it, sometimes all night sleeping in the car. That morning I’d been there since the night before, and I woke up when your mother came out. She strapped you in your car seat.’ She sent Helen a sideways glance. ‘You looked sort of ill, and I thought she was taking you to hospital, but then she drove to the park instead. I got it into my head she was meeting my husband, and that she’d tried to give me the slip by getting up so early. I’m afraid I just lost it.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else following her?’

  ‘Not really. I mean there was a cyclist on the road. One of those fanatics wearing the whole Tour de France get-up, but you can hardly chase a car while riding a bike, can you?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno, I’ve seen plenty of despatch riders on bikes terrorising other road users.’

  Fay laughed quietly. Another tube train rolled past on the track above them, and the children’s voices rose to a crescendo to drown out the noise.

  ‘I’ve asked you this before, but did you kill my mother?’

  ‘The truth is, I don’t know,’ Fay replied. ‘I wish I could say for sure, but I can’t. I know I wanted to.’

  Their eyes met, and Helen read the apology in them. She knew she should be angry, but for some reason she couldn’t summon up the feeling. If Fay was guilty, she’d paid for it ten times over. Perhaps it was time to let it go.

  Reaching out, she took Fay’s hand, which trembled slightly in
her own, and surprised even herself by saying, ‘I’m beginning to feel that it doesn’t matter any more. Whatever you did do, I think I understand your reasons. I can’t keep hating you, it’s too exhausting. Let’s concentrate on the future. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was from the beginning.’ She squeezed Fay’s hand. ‘Won’t you come back home with me? Charlie absolutely hates me for chasing you away.’

  ‘Charlie can be a bit like that.’ Fay rose and gathered up her photos and a few other belongings. ‘But it’s my fault too. I should’ve demanded to know what it was all about. I’m just not very strong.’

  No, Fay wasn’t strong at all, Helen noted as they made their way back. She’d used up all her strength in prison in order to survive, but now she’d been set free, she was just like so many other people daily trudging the streets of London, isolated, overlooked, living on the poverty line with no real future ahead of them.

  She was going to change that. Together with Jason and the others they would make sure Fay had a good life, and the first thing they’d do was to track down her family, come what may.

  ‘I’m making fish pie for supper,’ she said as they crossed the road. ‘Fancy giving me a ha—’

  She never finished the sentence. Everything happened so fast. An engine revving, Fay shouting and shoving her in the back, making her stumble and fall towards the kerb, dropping her bags. Her knee took the brunt of the impact, her elbow the rest. Red dots swam before her eyes, and she heard a sickening thud. A woman screamed.

  And then it was all over. The dark car which had ploughed into Fay turned the corner with a screech of brakes. The shock on the faces of passers-by imprinted itself onto Helen’s mind. She ignored her throbbing knee and the searing pain in her elbow. Ears thrumming and eyes stinging with tears, she crawled to where Fay lay all twisted and bent, and hugged her close.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Gentle hands lifted her away, and kind words brought her back to reality.

  ‘You mustn’t move someone who’s been in an accident,’ said one.

  ‘That bag lady saved your life,’ said another. ‘The car was coming right at you.’

  ‘I got some of the registration number,’ said a third, a young man already on his mobile. Detached, Helen thought he looked like an estate agent, with his sleek suit and gelled hair.