The Bones in the Attic

by Robert Barnard

  “Here, greedy, you’re taking more than your share!” said a boy called Colin. He looked at Rory.

  “There’s more in the freezer,” Rory said. He went into the scullery and, opening up another boxlike structure, took out a second carton.

  It was the first time Matt ever saw a freezer.

  That morning the grown-up Matt was on the twelve-to-seven shift at Radio Leeds, and taking some of the hourly TV bulletins. The children were still at their old schools in Pudsey, and when they had been packed off up to the Stanningley Road and the 72 bus, Matt bundled Beckham into the Volvo and drove off to give him a treat: an hour-long walk in Herrick Park.While Beckham ran here and there in ecstasy, meeting up with old friends and cautiously making sniffy contact with stranger-dogs, Matt followed on, occasionally calling him if trouble seemed to be brewing, but mostly leaving him to his own devices. That meant his own mind was free too, and as he walked he went over the memories that the name Lily had triggered.

  Peter and Marjie had been his friends from the first day. He had liked them, in his childish way, because they acknowledged so enthusiastically his footballing skills. Now he warned himself that the liking was based on ridiculous grounds. They had then both been in their early teens, Peter with deep-brown floppy hair, Marjie with fair hair tied behind in a rough sort of ponytail. He felt he could put faces to them—faces then, of course. Who could say what their faces were like now ?

  Rory, he ought to have been pals with, he being closer to his own age, but he knew he hadn’t been. Was it because his parents had had money—more money, apparently, than most of the parents in the terraces of stone houses, therefore much, much more than his own parents back in London? Probably that was it. And anyway, age seemed to have little to do with it: he was so far outside their age range—seven to their eleven to fourteen—that he had just attached himself as a sort of mascot to whomever he liked most.

  Lily Marsden’s face he remembered quite clearly. Not at all a pleasant face: withdrawn, inward-looking, mean, perhaps. Was she the Lily Fitch who now lived in Lansdowne Rise? If so, and in spite of all her efforts, she had become Lily, not Elizabeth. Colin, he could just about put a size and a shape to: around twelve, he would guess.

  There must have been more. Two teams of five-a-side meant there must have been more. Were the ones he remembered some kind of nucleus of the group, or was his memory a sort of random affair at the moment, which might swell out and clarify later on? Lily Fitch had apparently mentioned an Eddie Armitage, who was dead. That could be a red herring: he could have been part of the group at some stage of its existence other than the summer of sixty-nine. In any case, at the moment the name rang no bells of any kind.

  He realized suddenly that there was something in his memories of that second day that rang warning bells—something that could have led up to the feelings of unease or foreboding that he was later to take home with him when his mother was recovered. Going through those memories he realized it was the mention of money, of therebeing other ways of getting it than demanding more pocket money. He had known footballers who had found interesting ways of making money, often involving Asian betting syndicates. He sensed behind Marjie’s loaded remark an allusion to a figure, a person, someone in the shadows yet connected to, or presumably known to, the group.

  That afternoon Isabella rang him at Radio Leeds. There was a film on they all wanted to go and see, and they could easily get their homework done before they had to take the bus into town. Matt gave them permission to take the money from the stock in the scullery cupboard, which they knew about and were to use in emergencies. Then he leaned over and took down the Leeds telephone directory. Fitch, L., was at number 8, Lansdowne Rise.

  His television duties were finished by seven o’clock. It was twenty past when he cruised slowly down Lansdowne Rise, looking for number 8. The little street, on the border of Bramley and Kirkstall, was a mixture of turn-of-the-century houses very like the one his auntie Hettie had lived in two streets down, and the between-the-wars ones that had been fitted in between them. It was the latter sort that Lily Fitch inhabited—lower and more cramped-looking than the earlier ones. Smaller families meant more cramped houses. He got out and locked the car: he intended staying awhile. Then he slipped through the little gate and rang the doorbell.

  The woman who answered the door was not holding a glass, but that looked to Matt to be her natural stance. The impression was enhanced by a whiff of juniper berries that a draft from the hallway wafted out onto the evening air. She had switched on no light, so Matt could not get a look at her face.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Lily Fitch?”

  “If you like.”

  “Ah . . . My name is Matthew Harper, and I’m—”

  “Wait a minute.” She switched on the outside light, though the sun had not yet gone down. She peered at him. “I’ve just been watching you on the television.”

  “That’s right. I’m the sports correspondent and general dogsbody for Radio Leeds and ‘Look North.’”

  “Well, I never! What can you want with me?”

  There was no coyness in her words, though may be a desperate hope.

  “I’m wondering if your maiden name was Marsden.”

  An indefinable look—was it caution?—wafted over her face.

  “Ye-e-es.”

  “I think we may have known each other many years ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “I wonder if I could come in. There’s something I’d very much like to talk to you about.”

  There was a definite moment of hesitation—no reason why there shouldn’t be, with a strange man asking admittance, even one who in a sense had just been in her living space by the wonder of television. The hesitation, though, was momentary and was succeeded by a decision. She stood aside and let him in. Matt thought it probably was the status generated by his television appearances, combined with his suggestion that they had known each other. They went through to an overfull and shabby living room.

  “Like a drink?”

  Matt was about to refuse when it struck him thataccepting one might start the forming of bonds between them.

  “That would be nice.”

  “Gin? Or I’ve got lager.”

  “Lager’s fine.”

  While she fetched a can and a glass, pulled the tab open and poured, Matt looked surreptitiously at her face. Very puffy and blotched red, but the same small, unattractive mouth, now with a strong expression of discontent and disappointment.

  “You say we’ve known each other in the past,” Lily Fitch said, sitting down, her glass of gin on one arm of her chair, clutched but not sipped at.

  “I think so. A long time ago, when I was a little lad.”

  “Oh? When was that?”

  “The summer of sixty-nine.”

  This time the expression of wariness that came into her face was palpable.

  “Would that be the matter the police were here rabbiting on about?”

  “Yes,” admitted Matt. “I’ve just moved into Elderholm, one of the stone houses on Houghton Avenue, and I found the skeleton of a small girl in the attic there.”

  “Nasty for you.” She looked at her glass as if she needed a deep draft but didn’t feel she ought. “And was it there that we knew each other?”

  “Yes. I was staying with my aunt Hettie, a couple of streets away from here. I was seven, and I came up and played football with all you children from Houghton Avenue.”

  She thought for a bit. Was she trying to remember, or trying to decide what to say?

  “Don’t remember you. Kids came and went.”

  “Of course. Naturally. I think you let me join in because I was very good at football for my age. Otherwise you’d have told me to scram. I later became a professional.”

  “Nice.” She gave the impression that she would have liked to cast an appraising and sexual eye over him, but was holding herself back. “I don’t see yet what this has to do with me.”

  “
We think the child, or its body, may have been put in the attic about that time: the summer of sixty-nine.”

  The face briefly screwed up, as if she didn’t like that phrase.

  “I still don’t see what it has to do with me.”

  “No, of course not. We were just children, weren’t we? But all the old house owners have died or moved away. You’re the only one we know about still in the area—but the children will mostly be alive, won’t they, even if many of the parents will have died or gone into homes?”

  Uncertainty about what to say was obvious in her long pause.

  “The only one I can remember, Eddie Armitage, died, I think. I remember reading about it in the West Yorkshire Chronicle.”

  “Yes, you mentioned him to the police, and they’ve established that. He died a few years ago in the Halifax area. Isn’t there anyone else you can remember?”

  “No—I’d have told the police if there were.”

  “Surely you’d remember the other children in the other houses, the ones you played with?”

  “Who says I played with them?” Her voice momentarily became strident with the strain of maintaining the lie. “I don’t think I did much, except may be in the school holidays.Mostly I went around with others from my school. I was at Armley High, but a lot of the kids in those houses went to the Catholic schools.”

  “I see.”

  Perhaps she sensed a degree of skepticism in him, because she said: “Wait a minute. There was a family called Best, or Beest—”

  “Beeston?”

  “That’s it. There was a daughter a few years older than me, and she married an Iti waiter and went to Australia.”

  “She’d have left quite a bit before 1969, wouldn’t she?”

  “May be. I’m no earthly good with dates.”

  “When were you born?”

  “Nineteen fifty-six.”

  “So you’d be about thirteen when I knew you?”

  “If you did. That’s right.”

  “Which house was it you lived in?”

  “Sundown. Just next to the one where you turn as you come round the lane.”

  “I see. Were you an only child?”

  “Yeah. And my parents were killed in a pileup on the M1 when I was eighteen. I suppose that’s why I married that no-hoper Mickey Fitch. Can’t think of any other reason. I thought I needed someone to protect me.”

  “The marriage didn’t last?”

  “Last?” She laughed harshly. “It lasted a bloody sight longer than it should have done. There’s a kid, somewhere. It was ten years before I got up the courage to chuck him out—Mickey, I mean, not the boy. Christ, life’s a bitch. A fully fledged, paid-up bitch. Here, have another lager.”

  But Matt stood up. He wasn’t going to get anything more out of her now.

  “My lot will be back from the cinema soon. Their mother’s away. I’d better get home and get them something to eat. Look, here’s my card. I’m sure there are things lurking around in the back of your memory. I’d like to have another chat if anything, however small, does surface. Just give me a call, at home or at Radio Leeds, and I’ll be round.”

  But, driving home, he felt pretty sure that, however much she might want to, she would not be calling him. Her behavior was all of a piece, and it had nothing to do with her memory. For the police’s benefit she had come up with one name, knowing the man was dead. Faced with his incredulity that her memory could be as poor as it seemed to be, she had produced another name, knowing the woman was in Australia, and had gone there long before the events of sixty-nine.

  On the other hand, if she knew nothing about the events, this lady who had married an Italian, she must have known a lot about the families who lived around her as she was growing up. And she would have no reason to conceal her knowledge.

  Because that was what Lily Fitch had been doing, Matt was quite sure. The near-total loss of memory about the children who lived around her told him that. Whether she rang or not, he felt sure he would be speaking to her again, or hearing about her and her activities.

  CHAPTER SIX

  One Who Got Away

  The next morning, on the way to Radio Leeds, Matt stopped by at Millgarth, the West Yorkshire police headquarters, and spoke to Charlie Peace in the open area near the door, watching fascinated as a duty constable fended off the verbal assaults of a general public that seemed to think the police were responsible for potholed roads, lost cats, and dim street lighting. When he had told Charlie of the incidents from his childhood he had remembered, and the dim pickings from the Goldblatts and Lily Fitch, Matt said, “I think I might try and get in touch with Mrs. Beeston’s daughter.”Charlie nodded.

  “Rosamund Scimone. Yes. Difficult for us to justify spending time on her, since she was in Australia at the time, but she might spill the beans on background stuff if you approached her in the right way.”

  “Could you spell the surname?”

  “S-C-I-M-O-N-E.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “We looked up Mrs. Beeston’s funeral notice in the West Yorkshire Chronicle. ”

  Matt pondered, ignoring signs of impatience in Charlie, who was on the way to a job.

  “I’ve been thinking about this daughter. Lily Fitch said she was a few years older than her, but it must have been quite a few. Her mother was born in 1900, so at the least she was born by the early forties—during the war, in fact.”

  “Babies did get born in the war,” Charlie pointed out. “All I know about it I got from the television, but if the husband was older than her, which husbands usually were then, he’d most likely be doing civil defense or ARP work, not be away fighting Rommel in the desert.”

  “That’s true.”

  “There were several brothers and sisters named before her in the funeral notice. Probably she was an afterthought, conceived in a comforting cuddle while Jerry was overhead trying to pulverize Armley.”

  “Did the report say anything about where this Rosamund lived?”

  “Oh, yes—Tasmania. That’s the island at the bottom, isn’t it?”

  “Yes . . . And Lily Fitch said her husband was a waiter. I just wonder whether they mightn’t have gone there, set up a restaurant, and stayed there. I suppose Hobart would be the first place to try.”

  “Sounds like sense. Wherever they are, with a name like Scimone you’re in with a chance,” Charlie pointed out. He looked at his watch, raised his hand, and was gone.

  When Matt rang 153, though the operator said therewere no Scimone R’s in Tasmania, she said there were two Scimone L’s in Hobart.

  “That’ll be the husband,” said Matt, “and probably a child. Could I have both?”

  He waited until the children were well in bed and asleep before he made the call. It seemed odd to be ringing somewhere where it was already the next morning.

  “Hobart 746981,” said a woman’s voice, strongly Australian.

  “Is that Mrs. Scimone?” Matt asked tentatively.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Well, not exactly. I am married, but I kept my maiden name, so I prefer Ms. Scimone. I mean, who’d want to be called Stopes, especially a Catholic? Who’s calling, please?”

  “My name’s Matt Harper. I’m wanting to talk to the Rosamund Scimone who grew up in Houghton Avenue, Bramley, in Leeds.”

  “Oh, it’s Mother you want.” Matt thought he should have known that from the moment he heard the voice. Charlie would have realized the voice wasn’t old enough for the mother, but Matt was new to the detection game. “Is it anything to do with Dad’s death?”

  “No, it’s not. I’m sorry to hear he’s died.”

  “Just a coupla months ago. Mum’s still devastated. Keeps the restaurant going all right, but it’s like she’s on autopilot. They’d been married thirty-five years.”

  “I wondered if they’d opened a restaurant.”

  “First Italian restaurant in the whole of Tazzie. Before they came ‘spaghetti’ meant a tin of sp
aghetti in tomato sauce on toast. Mother learned all the tricks of the trade at Uncle Aldo’s restaurant in Melbourne, then they came here and opened La Terrazza. Beaut little place.Dave and I are wondering whether to go in with her. It’s a good earner, no mistake, and it would mean it would carry on after Mum decides to chuck in the sponge.”

  “Are you an only child?”

  “Oh, no. I’ve got a brother, Carlo—Charley, he calls himself. He lives in Sydney and is into computers. He’d eat his meals off the screen if he could. If we don’t take it over it’ll be sold. What did you want to talk to Mum about?”

  “Well, it’s sort of about her childhood, and—”

  “That’s all right, then. It’ll take her mind off Dad. She needs that at the moment. Any little thing just sets her off. So keep to the early days and you’ll be all right. Got her number?”

  Matt checked that he’d got the right number, and then rang.

  “Hobart 767323.”

  The voice was quite English, with a dash of Yorkshire still. It was not so much old as tired.

  “Mrs. Scimone? I’ve just been talking to your daughter.”

  “To Leona? Yes, there’s a lot of confusion.”

  “It was you I wanted to talk to. You see, I’ve just bought Elderholm, in Bramley—”

  “Oh, really! The old home! Does that mean Mr. Farson is dead?”

  “He’s in a nursing home. The son has powers of attorney, and he sold it to me.”

  There was silence. Matt could hear her thinking of the changes time made in families.

  “I never knew him well. Even people I did know well I’ve lost touch with. Australia’s a lovely place to be, but the distancesmean that old ties become frail. Thirty years ago you didn’t ring home at the drop of a hat.”

  “I suppose not. I hadn’t thought of that.”