by Rebecca Tope
‘I used the word carelessly,’ he acknowledged. ‘It’s not important. Besides – I didn’t see a computer in your house.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘There isn’t one.’
It was dark when we got back. I was hungry and Thomas was annoyed with me. Feeling vaguely sorry for myself, I let Phil go back to his beloved and settled down to a plate of scrambled egg, in the company of my cat. But before I did that, I locked the back door – something I very seldom did before finishing up for the night. And I tried not to imagine shadowy figures hiding under the bed or in a cupboard upstairs. I hadn’t felt this level of nervousness since I was seventeen and my parents had gone for a rare visit to some cousins in Norfolk, staying away for two nights. I had been alone in the farmhouse for the first time in my life.
It was an unfamiliar feeling I experienced in my Cold Aston home, based as it was on the hard facts of two unlawful killings of women I knew. A sense of deliberate focused malevolence filled the house. All the stories and traditions of Samhain swirled around in my head. Lucifer walked the land, with his hosts of demons trying to snatch our unwary souls. It was easier to die at this season of the year, our hold on life becoming more fragile. Those who had already died crowded closer to us, pressing against the veil between the two worlds. They wanted us to join them. I imagined Gaynor’s wraith, timid and mournful, drawing me to her, wanting to tell me how it was she’d died.
I went to my spinning wheel, taking up a special hunk of pure Cotswold fleece, which I’d been looking forward to working on for months. It was from a two-year-old ewe, who had lived out all winter, avoiding the hayseeds and other rubbish that they picked up indoors. The fibre flowed through my fingers with no need for carding. It was moist and supple and when washed would be a dazzling white. Women had been spinning since neolithic times. It linked me to them, to the persistence of human survival. It made me feel that everything would be all right again. It sent the ghosts back to where they belonged, silent and untroublesome.
There were things I ought to get on with the next morning, regardless of this shattering second murder. Top of the list was visiting Gaynor’s flat and making sure everything was secure. The telephone and electricity would have to be turned off. The stopcock should be closed and all the doors and windows locked. It was a routine I’d gone through before, at Greenhaven and one or two other places. Gaynor had owned the flat outright, having bought it with the money her parents left. For the first time, I wondered who would inherit it now.
Verona Farebrother was not my responsibility, but she too owned a property. The sister would have to come and do the necessary, I supposed. Suddenly the whole area seemed full of people sorting out possessions abandoned by their dead owners. It was another aspect of Samhain that I had not considered before. Until that week, I had only been concerned with Helen’s things – and then only at a distance.
Returning to my nervous comparisons between myself and the two murder victims, I found myself listing all the others I could think of in the same general category. If you included women of all ages, I easily came up with a dozen, just in the surrounding villages. Women, it seemed, lived alone these days. They somehow acquired a house or flat and made themselves a home in which they were answerable to nobody but themselves. Men must hate it, I realised. Women were supposed to need protection, to give men a reason for getting out there and earning money. If they made it too obvious that they genuinely enjoyed the single life, some fundamental balance was destroyed. When they prospered in the business world and drove flamboyant cars and held their heads up high there must be men out there who itched to slaughter them.
I was describing Verona Farebrother only too well, I realised.
But there would always be women like Thea to give such enraged men grounds for hope. Women who liked being part of a couple, who needed to have somebody else to think about first thing in the morning before they thought about themselves. And good luck to her, I said to myself. Without her and her kind, the social fabric really would come unravelled.
I fell asleep planning the next day in detail. It helped keep my mind off the sounds the house was making, and the conviction that I could hear somebody breathing right underneath my bed.
Saturday morning was upon me before I was quite ready for another day. The murder of Verona had stunned me more than I realised, knocking me into a profound sleep from which I was reluctant to surface. But nudging persistently at me was a sense of urgency. My usual instinct to detach and back away, leaving others to do the worrying and general emoting was overlaid by the knowledge that what was happening was inescapably personal to me. I couldn’t dodge it any longer. And the next thing I had to do was go to Gaynor’s flat and shoulder my responsibilities as her closest friend – if indeed that’s what I was. It wouldn’t entirely surprise me to find that Caroline had usurped that position – or even Oliver bloody Grover.
I had forgotten to ask Phil how I could best get hold of a key to Gaynor’s flat. I was parking outside before it even occurred to me. Determined not to give up, I checked all the obvious hiding places. It was a ground floor property, with a small garden at the side for Gaynor’s use. She had stacked three plastic chairs against the wall, and a row of terracotta pots held straggly plants. I tilted each one to look underneath, then rummaged in the compost around the plants, to no avail. Then I noticed a big stone doing nothing much at the edge of the lawn. It was the usual yellowy-grey hue, typical of the area, and there were signs that it had been moved recently. The grass to one side of it was brown, as if that was where it had been sitting previously. I turned it over, needing both hands to shift it, and found a door key underneath. Only then did I feel a slight jolt of annoyance that Gaynor had never disclosed the hiding place to me. I wondered whether anybody else in the world knew about it.
Making no efforts to conceal myself, I unlocked the front door and went in. There were no immediate signs that the police had searched the place, although I knew they must have done. Gaynor kept it tidy and dusted. She hadn’t hoarded knick-knacks or junk mail or old newspapers. She didn’t have a cat or dog or budgie, but the house plants in all the downstairs rooms had wilted, and some looked beyond recovery.
She had an old oak writing desk, relic of a Welsh grandparent, where she kept all the usual documents. Fighting to convince myself that I not only had the right, but the obligation, I flicked through all the cubbyholes, looking for a will, or insurance policy, that ought to be consulted as a matter of urgency. Something akin to the feeling I’d had about Helen’s abandoned possessions took hold of me, but this time it was skewed by the fact of a sudden and premature death. Gaynor had had no chance to put anything in order. She hadn’t had time to destroy or hide anything private. It was all exposed to view, naked without its owner there to shield it. It was a horrible sensation. I expected her ghost to tap me on the shoulder and accuse me of snooping.
One of the desk drawers was locked, which came as a real surprise. Normal people, living alone, don’t lock things. Who did she think would try to open it? What could she possibly want to hide so securely?
I satisfied myself with the idea that her father had probably locked it twenty years ago and then lost the key. Nobody would have bothered to try to open it since, until the police, who I imagined had used some sort of device to get it open when they examined the flat for clues nearly a week ago, although it seemed strange that they should lock it again.
I drifted into fantasy, imagining the desk going to an auction room, being bought, still locked, and the new owner taking a hairpin to it and finding some wondrous object like a diamond necklace. I lifted one end of the desk, and waggled it cautiously, listening for movement inside the drawer. It was a foolish attempt. All I accomplished was to put so much weight on one of the legs that it gave a nasty cracking sound, forcing me to hurriedly drop the whole thing. It would be a shame to break it – it was obviously a genuine antique.
I had already found all the documents I needed, including an old address bo
ok. On the front page, in childish writing, was the usual many-lined address, culminating in “The Universe.” It dated the book to Gaynor’s pre-teen years, I guessed. Flicking through, I found myself, alongside six or seven names and addresses from Brynmawr in South Wales, where Gaynor had gone to school. It was a forlorn little thing, with no entries for anybody in the Cotswolds apart from myself. No Caroline Johnson or Oliver Grover or Gervase-brother-of-Xavier, I noted with satisfaction. There were ticks and dates against my name, which I finally worked out indicated that she had sent me a Christmas card each year. Only four other people got cards from her, it seemed. The only one that looked as if she mattered was a Normanton, Mandy, under the Ns, with an address in Calgary, Alberta. This must be Gaynor’s cousin, and the probable inheritor of the flat and its contents.
It seemed a reasonable assumption that nobody had yet contacted Mandy to tell her of the demise of her cousin. I would have to ask Stella – she knew all about such procedures. There was no phone number in the address book, which meant I would have to consult the overseas Directory Enquiries, or else write a letter.
Gradually I became aware of the myriad tasks mounting up, with nobody to tackle them but me. The death hadn’t been registered. The utilities hadn’t been disconnected. I wasn’t sure which to do first, or even how to go about most of them. And I still hadn’t been upstairs.
Gaynor’s bedroom was even more distressing. Her duvet was folded back, none too neatly, and there was a mug with dregs of tea on the table beside the bed. I peeped into the wardrobe, wondering what I ought to do with her clothes and was struck by how few garments hung there. A drawer at ground level contained folded shirts and two pairs of trousers. In a small two-drawer chest I found underwear, scarves, hankies and a swimming costume.
On top of the chest was a porcelain dish containing the usual dusty collection of rubber bands, small change, dead batteries and odd buttons. Things you took out of your pockets before slinging the garment in the washing basket. There was also a very pretty vase with a single frond of dried pampas grass in it. At least that could go, I thought, with some vague intention of making a start on clearing the place. I lifted the vase and something chinked inside it. Upending it, I caught a small brass key.
The locked drawer must have been nagging at the back of my mind, because I ran down the stairs and tried the key, full of a sense that this was important.
It fitted, and the drawer slid out with utter smoothness. It was stuffed full of leaflets, magazines, some jewellery and a photo.
Fingering them delicately, even warily, I could not believe what I was seeing. The literature was all about Freemasonry – but with the twist that they described Lodges run by and for women. Instructions on how to establish such a Lodge, the restrictions and tolerances accorded to them by the Grand Lodge, the regalia they could use and the secrets they must keep.
The photo showed Gaynor Lewis standing between two other women. A printed label was attached at the bottom, giving the date and ‘First official meeting of the New Lodge.’
The two other women were Verona Farebrother and Caroline Johnson, formerly Hollis.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Phil and Thea were sitting in the lamplight when I went over to Greenhaven. It was chilly and they both wore the jumpers I’d given them. They asked me in, politely but with no obvious enthusiasm.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But I need your advice.’
As I described my discovery in Gaynor’s flat, producing the photograph with an accusing flourish, Phil seemed impatient and distracted. Before long he interrupted me. ‘Yes, yes. We’ve examined the house already. We found the address book and made copies of all the addresses. We opened the locked drawer, as well and saw what you saw.’
I was stunned. ‘And?’ I stammered.
His face went still. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said. ‘All I can say is that it might prove useful in our investigations.’
Thea had listened to everything with total attention. ‘Caroline is a Freemason,’ she said slowly. ‘Did you know? Before seeing the photo, I mean?’
Phil shook his head. ‘No, I did not. I’d heard some reports that there was a female Lodge being set up, but it didn’t interest me and I had no idea who was involved.’
‘But…’ I was shouting, still flapping the picture at him. ‘This must tell you who killed them. This must be what it’s all about.’
They both stared at me. ‘Why?’ said Phil at last. ‘Why must it?’
‘You’re not accusing Caroline are you?’ said Thea with a light huff of laughter.
I sat down with a thud on one of the upright chairs standing against the wall. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t think. This is so bizarre. Gaynor can’t have been a Mason. Why would she?’
Phil’s face revealed that he knew far more than he was saying. He was way ahead of me and I was once again the clamouring child following in his wake, desperate for his attention and friendship.
‘We don’t think it’s important,’ he said softly.
I stared at the floor where the carpet showed the more vivid marks where rugs had protected it from the ravages of ordinary life. Thea had packed the rugs in one of the black bin liners now sitting in the dining room. I almost gave up my quest for an explanation under the pressure of Phil’s confident male superiority.
Almost, but not quite. ‘Daphne,’ I said, as the name flicked into my mind. ‘Daphne might have found out. She hates the Masons. She would be furious with Verona if she found out she was dabbling in it.’
Phil and Thea both seemed uncomfortable. ‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What haven’t you told me? Why do I feel like an ignorant child here?’
‘We’re questioning Mr Grover and his – partner,’ said Phil. ‘They can’t account for their movements either on Sunday or yesterday. We know there were certain conflicts between Grover and Miss Lewis. Since then we’ve been informed about similar trouble with Miss Farebrother. I can’t say any more than that.’
Again I had to force my brain to function. ‘Oliver’s a mason,’ I remembered. ‘Is that something to do with it?’
Phil clamped his lips together. Angrily I kept up the questions. ‘And why the Barrow?’ I demanded. ‘And knitting needles? That wouldn’t be the way they’d do it. You might as well accuse Pamela and Kenneth. At least she knits.’
And they knew the two dead women. And Kenneth had money trouble, bad enough to upset Pamela. I raised my head. ‘It could have been them,’ I repeated. ‘Just as easily.’
Thea got up and threw another log on the fire. ‘That’s the last one,’ she said.
Her voice sounded different – uncaring, as if it didn’t matter whether or not they had any heating. I wondered what had happened since I last spoke to her. I guessed it had something to do with their plans for the coming week.
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ said Phil. ‘We’ll be leaving tomorrow.’
‘Oh?’ It seemed very abrupt, and idiotically upsetting. I didn’t want them to leave me to cope with the aftermath of two murders by myself. I looked at Thea, hoping she could read my thoughts.
‘We’ve been arguing about it,’ she said, disarmingly frank as ever. ‘I was hoping to stay on here.’
I knew better than to reveal to Phil that she and I had already discussed the matter. I merely said, ‘I’ll miss you if you go. It’s been nice having somebody in the house.’ I looked at Phil. ‘And the police protection’s been reassuring, too.’
He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Don’t give me that,’ he said. ‘I’ve hardly been here all week.’
‘Well, you were quite a lot better than nothing.’ They both looked at me, checking whether or not I was being arsy. I smiled. ‘No, but really, I hate to see you go.’ I looked round at the disorganised room, full of boxes and sad furniture. ‘You’ll never finish all this by tomorrow, will you?’
Phil groaned. ‘We’ve given up hope of that. I’m going to call a house clearance outfit. They can just take the lot. We�
��ve boxed up the bits to keep. It’s not a lot, to be honest.’
A kind of panic gripped me at the thought of Helen’s lovely things being bundled off to various jumble sales and salerooms. ‘No!’ I said. ‘You can’t do that. Why did you leave it a year, if that’s all you’re going to do?’
‘That’s what I said,’ Thea remarked.
‘What about Caroline?’ I said, determined not to let her slip out of the conversation completely. ‘She might want a few mementoes. She liked Helen.’
Phil took a deep breath, assembling his energies for the female onslaught. ‘I don’t really think she warrants much consideration,’ he said. ‘She’s remarried now. Her life as a Hollis is over.’
It was an odd way of putting it, revealing his instinctive male sense of ownership over his wife, marked by the surname that she had rejected in favour of another man’s. I couldn’t begin to imagine how that felt, but he obviously didn’t like it. I glanced at Thea, wondering if she was thinking along similar lines.
It was hard to tell, but it did occur to me that she might be entertaining the idea that her own surname could one day be Hollis, in which case she too might feel justified in keeping some of Helen’s things.
I lost patience. ‘Phil,’ I said, rather loudly. ‘There are at least three of us who have been too polite and restrained so far for our own good. Caroline, Thea and me. And you’ve been too distracted to realise that we might well fancy some of this stuff. Not just clothes and jewellery but furniture, rugs, pots and pans. You don’t need the money a house clearance chap would give you. It would be hardly anything, anyway. If it’s all too much for you, then get out of the way and let me and Thea sort it out. We can get Caroline to come over as well, if she wants to.’
He was genuinely surprised. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ he exploded, looking at Thea rather than me. ‘Why the bloody hell didn’t you say?’